Chapter Text
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 0300
What would she give for peace?
Life. Soul. Body. The war requires it all.
“Oscar Charlie Bravo is a go.” The words echo off the bare walls of the room, tinny and cold.
To give her life—that was never a question. Death is the price of war, and this war could easily kill her, as it has killed so many already. But dying is easy. It’s one flash of green light.
And she has already given her soul. Avada kedavra. How many Death Eaters has she killed? Each one fracturing her, spindly cracks arching and multiplying. Now, she is a pile of shattered glass.
Could she give her body, too? Her autonomy is all she has left.
Had. All she had left. Now? She has nothing.
The ghostly lynx hovers over her bed, repeating Kingsley’s message. “Oscar Charlie Bravo is a go. Report to headquarters immediately.”
The patronus washes the room in light, ripples of ethereal silver and blue, like the tide before a storm. When it vanishes, Hermione rolls out of bed.
Wand, boots, cloak. Check.
Across the dark room, Lavender Brown props herself up on one elbow, watching her. All these years later, and the two of them are still rooming, thrown together out of habit and familiarity. But not anymore. Tonight was the last, and now it’s over.
Lavender’s face is pinched on one side from a scar. It puckers her pale skin into long white lines which trace down her jaw and neck and disappear under her tank top. Greyback mauled her back in ‘98. Hermione doesn’t like thinking about that day. Hogwarts in ruins, lines of the dead. In her mind, that’s the day the war really started.
“Good luck, Hermione,” Lavender whispers.
Hermione nods. Crosses the room. Grabs her hand. Squeezes.
Lavender’s eyes are glossy. She’s sitting up now. “I believe in you,” she says, but the waver in her voice says the opposite. “You can do this.”
Hermione swallows the lump in her throat. “Goodbye Lav. Don’t die without me.”
Lavender tries to laugh. It’s their little joke. The two of them, thrown on so many missions together in the beginning. They were so underprepared, so young. In the same battle Parvati died, Hermione took a lava curse to her chest. Lavender got her out, got her to a healer in time.
She was weeping, horrible, ugly tears, mostly over Parvati, but over Hermione as well. You can’t die too, she had said. Come on, Hermione. Stay with me.
Don’t die without me. I can’t do this alone.
“Don’t die without me,” Lavender whispers back.
Hermione doesn’t try to wake anyone else before portkeying away. Ron is at a different safe house. Harry is dead. Is there anyone else that matters?
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 0300
OCB, an abbreviation for operation cuckoo bird. Hermione Granger, the Order’s parasitic damsel in disguise.
“Greengrass slipped into a coma as of thirty minutes ago,” Kingsley says. He’s wearing a long silk robe thrown over a t-shirt and boxers. His dark skin is bruised darker around his tired eyes. The war has aged him.
He looked so young, back when Hermione met him in fifth year, now, he could be her grandfather. “She is a vegetable, no brain activity, being kept alive with magic only.”
Hermione sighs with relief. Since they started prepping for this mission a month ago, this was always the best-case scenario. Polyjuice can have issues if the subject is deceased.
“This is your lifeline, Granger.” He drops a ring into her open palm.
Gold band, giant-ass diamond, so fitting for a pureblood princess. It’s a copy of Astoria’s wedding ring. Hermione slips it onto her left ring finger. When she has orders the ring will warm, and a date and time will appear engraved in the inner band.
“The polyjuice?”
“Your handler will have all your potions ready at Mungos.”
She frowns. “We’re still going with Pansy Parkinson?”
“Yes.” Kingsley glances at the clock on the wall. “Your priority is the horcrux. If you happen to learn anything else, of course pass it on, but do not sacrifice your position for anything less than the horcrux. We have other avenues for intelligence. No going rogue on this assignment, Granger.”
“I know. I understand.”
“I mean it. This mission is vital.”
Hermione rolls her neck. “Every mission is vital.”
“Granger.”
“Kingsley. I understand.”
“Alright. You need to go now. There’s only so much time you have to pull off the switch.”
“Ok.” She turns, hesitates. “Kingsley. If you see Ron—don’t tell him what my mission is. I need for him not to know.”
Kingsley’s eyes soften. “The portkey is to the roof. Parkinson’ll be waiting for you there.”
Hermione nods. She taps her wand on her head and feels the slimy magic of disillusionment coat her like sticky batter. Now, to jump into the fire. Now, the mission begins.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 0300
“You lucked out,” Pansy Parkinson says.
Time has carved her into a bony shard of what she used to be. Green healer robes make her skin look sallow. Her hair is still glossy, though. Glossy black and tied back in a perfect french knot.
“Why’s that?”
They’re rushing down a dark stairwell, and the flickering exit sign casts red light on the stairs. Hermione’s body has already morphed and stretched into something new. Something alien.
“Today’s his birthday. But I think you can beg off birthday sex,” Pansy smirks, “since you're on your deathbed.”
“Right.” Hermione stills her mind, pushing away her natural reaction to the revolting thought of birthday sex with a Death Eater. That Death Eater.
She was recommended for this mission due to her extensive research and experience with horcruxes but it was her skill in occlumency that secured her place. Ron never took to it like her, few ever did. She used to wear her heart on her sleeve. She used to betray herself with barely concealed facial expressions, body language easier to read than a book.
But she lost her heart long ago.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 0400
What is it, to give up your body? Ever since Harry died, Hermione could never shake the feeling that this war would kill her. She had resigned herself to her fate. So why, if her life belongs to the war, does discarding her body feel so beastly?
All she’s ever had, really, is herself. Her skin and bones and sinew, her stupid f*cking hair. How is she supposed to leave herself behind? How is she supposed to become someone new?
Astoria. She’s practiced—has studied Astoria’s memories, has dug through her mind like a petty thief.
Does it make it okay, if the assault was for a good cause? It’s an impossible question. This whole blasted war is like exam day, one where each question is an impossible moral quandary.
Imagine the war as a runaway trolley, where no matter which set of tracks it's on, the innocent get hurt. One set of tracks has Astoria, the other has the unknown consequences of not proceeding with OCB. It could cost the war. So is there a choice at all? And if there’s no choice, does that absolve Hermione? What is agency in the determinism of war?
Astoria was already suffering, close to death. Hermione had watched her scream, had clawed through her mind regardless. Had obliviated her after. And she had watched her through other people’s eyes, too. Had learned her long gait, her musical tone, her easy smiles.
But to be her.
It's like a dance. The choreography of disguise. A performance for the enemy.
She’s a ballerina. All she needs now is the funny little skirt.
She wears Astoria’s skin like a costume, Silence of the Lambs style. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or perhaps a wolf in wolf’s clothing.
Sweet Astoria, was she a sheep or a wolf? Even standing firmly on the other side of the war, she seemed innocent. Hermione is intimately familiar with her mind. She wasn’t a hateful person, didn’t care about blood politics. The dark mark on her arm was little more than veneer. She was a bystander. And maybe there’s a certain type of evil in that. ‘The banality of evil,’ it’s called. The Hermione that Harry knew, so young and full of righteous fervor, would have been disgusted with Astoria.
But that version of Hermione died with Harry.
War has demolished her, desensitized her. And Astoria is a reminder of life before the war. There’s a temptation to look at that time with nostalgia, a time when the wizarding world was simmering with prejudice and corruption. It was a time when it was easy to say sure, there are things worth dying for, because no one was actually dying .
And Hermione would die for the cause still. She would give her life, as Harry gave his.
But it’s easy to wonder, after six years of carnage, even if the path of war leads to utopia, is it justified if it’s paved with so much death and destruction?
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 0400
Malfoy. When Pansy wheels Hermione out of intensive care, he’s there. Waiting.
She shouldn’t be surprised. He was married to Astoria. But their relationship was so antagonistic and fragile, that Hermione had hoped this meeting could be delayed.
No such luck.
His head is in his hands as he stares at the floor. His robes are bloodstained and muddy and his platinum hair is grey from a film of mud and ash. He must have come here straight from the battlefield. Which of her friends did he kill tonight? He’s the only one in the waiting room, and traces of dark magic emanate from him. Surfur, smoke, bile.
How to talk to him without scowling. How to touch him without recoiling. Things Hermione needs to accomplish. Make the impossible possible.
He meets her gaze sharply. His face is blank, like static on a TV. Watching her with those dead eyes. Hermione saw a picture of Ted Bundy on a BBC special about serial killers once—he had that same blank stare as Malfoy. Maybe evil always wears the same mask.
“Still alive, I see.” Malfoy rises, crossing his arms. “Pansy.”
“Hey, Draco. Astoria’s doing really great on the new treatment.” She squeezes Hermione’s shoulder, a show of affection. “She needs rest though. She said she’d rather sleep at home in her own bed, and I don’t see a problem with that. I’ll be on call all night, so don’t hesitate to floo, and I can pop on over if needed.”
She directs this last sentence at Hermione, and Hermione nods.
“Where is Daphne?” Hermione says from the wheelchair.
A twitch of his brow. Silence.
“You told the healers not to floo her,” he finally says.
“Right.”
“I can take you to her.”
“No. Let’s go home.”
His brow twitches again. “I’ll apparate you back, but I have to return for mission reports.”
“Right.”
He nods, swallows. Steps closer. His hand closes around her arm. His bare skin against hers.
The stench of battle envelops her, heady cologne obscured by smoke and sweat.
She doesn’t recoil.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 0500
Astoria had a hell of a closet. Huge, walk in, HGTV approved. And in the back is a little-used dresser, filled mostly with old school uniforms. Perfect.
Hermione creates a false bottom on the middle drawer, using as little magic as possible.
Inside she places a stack of muggle money, five hundred pounds—enough to disappear for a few days if things go south. In goes the flask of potion to mimic Astoria’s symptoms, the flask of contraceptive potion, the flask of polyjuice. A handful of Astoria’s dirty blond hair tied with a green ribbon in case she has to brew more potion herself.
Lastly, her vinewood wand. Shutting it away is like hacking off a limb. Here’s to hoping Astoria’s wand responds to her.
She places the false bottom back, carefully arranges the old robes.
No wards. It’s better to conceal things the muggle way. Magic can always be traced. There’s no use worrying about the transfiguration she used to create the secret space. What is she going to do, stay here without a backup plan? Besides, any piece of furniture in this house will have residual traces of magic either from production or exposure.
So she shuts the drawer. Shuts the window to herself. Shuts the window in her mind to Hermione Granger.
My name is Astoria Malfoy née Greengrass, and this is my life now.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 1000
Narcissa is in the garden—wide brimmed hat, patches of dirt on her knees, self satisfied smile. Hermione sees her from a window down the hall from Astoria’s bedroom. She’s pruning roses. Gardening, as if the world isn’t falling apart right outside her wrought iron gates.
How can these people live with themselves, these purebloods .
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 1100
Malfoy’s study is not warded, but on the wall is a portrait of his father. He tracks her movements with his empty painted eyes, and Hermione doesn’t dare snoop further under his watch.
She pretends she went in the study to look at the portrait, because she’ll need an excuse now to be in here.
It must have been painted before the war, because he still looks healthy and self-possessed—still has that arrogant smile lingering on his face. The war leached the vitality out of him. At the end, he was frail, skittish, wraith-like.
Another dead man. Ron killed Lucius in 2001.
There had been an attack near a muggle army base. It was an unfortunately brilliant play by Voldemort: stage a battle that the muggle government can’t ignore that weakens the Statute of Secrecy, and then when the International Confederation of Wizards inevitably gets upset, he has the perfect scapegoat. Lo and behold, the next day’s Prophet labeled the Death Eaters as defenders of the Statute, and the Order as war-mongering terrorists.
It was a bad scene. The muggle army rolled out with their armored tanks and automatic weapons, scared sh*tless from the magic, and they couldn’t have known that the Order was there to help them. There was a lot of friendly fire. It was chaos. Ginny didn’t make it. One flash of green light from Malfoy’s wand—at least it was quick.
His father’s death wasn’t. Ron made sure of that.
She can still hear Ron's voice, shaking, wet, as he charged at Malfoy. You sick f*ck you bastard f*cking dirty Death Eater scum I’ll make you f*cking regret f*cking killing her you c*nt—
And he did.
Soon, there was another mission. A rescue. The Death Eaters were holding a high ranking order member named Gawain Robards, and it was vital the Order retrieve him before he could break under torture. Malfoy and his father were there at the complex.
Ron broke rank and protocol and went straight for Lucius.
Hermione can still see Lucius’s skin peeling back from his bones, the smell of burning flesh like rotting barbecue. Lucius screaming, eyes rolling back, gasping, gargling on his own blood, somehow still alive.
And Malfoy. The way he wrenched the mask off his face as he dived down to help his father. The way his breath left his body as he realized there was nothing he could do. Nothing beside revenge. The stillness of the air, right before he screamed—it was like time slowed down. Hermione’s vision tunneled. Get to Ron, get to Ron, get to Ron, was all she could think. And Malfoy. Watching the vein in his forehead throb, his wand whip up, his expression shift from shock to rage. He left the carcass of his father behind him, still convulsing. He charged at Ron.
The team had scattered by that point. It was just her and Ron. And Hermione found herself dueling two on one against Malfoy.
And as she was dodging and casting and fighting for her life, she thought how odd it all was that they shared so much history—however antagonistic that history was. She met this man when they were both eleven years old, ate her eggs and toast one table over from him for six years, was there the day in fifth year when he showed up to Transfiguration hung over and vomited all over Goyle’s book bag. In third year, when his arm was in the sling and he was milking it for all it was worth, Harry had to chop potion ingredients for him, and he riled Harry up so much that Ron threw a sloth brain at him in Harry’s defense. It was almost innocent, the hijinks they used to get into. And here they were, almost ten years later, trying to kill each other.
Rage made him dangerous, or maybe he was always that way. His speed and stamina were impossible to match, almost inhuman. It was easy to believe he’d managed to climb rank as quickly as he did, as Order intelligence suggested. He fought with the precision of a machine and the power of a lightning storm.
Their fight had swept them closer to the rest of the team, who were now engaged in all out battle. She got cut off from Ron—another Death Eater drew her away. She knew it could be moments until Death Eater backup arrived. Malfoy was pressing forward like an avalanche, and Ron was getting slower. And they weren’t anywhere close to mission completion. The only hope of Ron’s survival was to abandon the mission.
So Hermione made a call.
She killed Robards. Avada Kedavra. She had to do it. There was no way to get to him in time. Killing him was the only way to get Ron out and make sure Robard’s intel wasn’t compromised. She signaled mission completion, and everyone portkeyed out.
No one saw what she did, other than Lavender.
Of course, the whole mess was Ron’s fault, and he was facing a suspension, possibly a dishonorable discharge. So Hermione fudged the mission reports. And Lav would never rat on her—she corroborated and told Kingsley that Robards was killed in enemy crossfire.
Hermione ended up getting Ron out with barely a slap on the wrist. But Kingsley knew she had lied. Hadn’t fully trusted her since then.
Maybe he was right, too. Because that’s when Kingsley realized—as loyal as Hermione is to the Order, she will always be more loyal to those she loves.
But how many people can Hermione claim that she loves? So many are dead. Maybe that’s why Kingsley trusted her enough with this mission. There’s no risk of her throwing a mission if there’s no one left to throw it for.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 1300
The elves' names are Trinket and Treasure. The message is clear, Malfoy. Why not just name them Property and Possession?
Trinket very firmly tells her to go lie down. “Mistress just got back from the hospital,” he frets, “isn’t she tired?”
“Oh,” says Hermione, slightly taken aback by the evident worry in the elf’s tone. “I’ve been lying down all morning. A bit of walking will do me some good.”
“Trinket thinks Mistress should lie down.” Trinket wears a hot pink pillowcase, and his boney hands twist the corners. “And Trinket can get Mistress some soup?”
“If the Young Mistress says she will walk, let her walk,” Treasure interrupts. Treasure has a clipboard and a long pheasant feather quill that she taps impatiently. She’s wearing what Hermione can only describe as a business casual—several pillowcases layered in such a way to give the illusion of a suit jacket and pencil skirt. “Treasure wants Italian for dinner, if it pleases the Young Mistress.”
“Oh,” Hermione says. Already, she’s so out of her element.
“Since Italian is the Master’s favorite,” Treasure continues, barely concealing a blank, inconvenienced stare. “And it is the Master’s birthday, as the Young Mistress should know…”
“Yes, yes,” Hermione says. “Italian would be wonderful.”
Treasure sighs, then pops away.
Trinket smiles at her. “What about tea? Would Mistress like tea?”
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 1300
She takes tea in the garden with Narcissa, because this is what Astoria would do. She was, unfortunately, very close with her mother in law.
Narcissa calls her dear and darling and presents her with a yellow peony, and Hermione has to act as if she’s so very touched that this woman would give her a flower. A flower, honestly. Astoria, in this woman’s eyes, just made this miraculous recovery, scratched and clawed her way off of her deathbed, and she gets a single flower? What a grand prize.
Narcissa’s smile wavers. She straightens the flower so the stem is perfectly parallel to the table’s edge. “You were released from Mungo’s last night,” she frets.
Hermione nods.
“You know, darling, we all thought it was over.” She shakes her head, eyes wide and vacant. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re still alive.”
“Me too.”
“Of course you are, darling.” Narcissa’s spoon takes a short, distracted voyage into her teacup, only to be discarded quickly on her saucer. “Did Healer Parkinson say anything else about the new treatment?”
Hermione nods again, and Narcissa sips her tea, waiting.
The new treatment. A cover story to explain why Astoria’s terminal illness is no longer killing her. Also, a convenient way to put her in her handler’s path on a semi-regular basis.
Hermione picks up the peony, runs her fingers through the soft layers of yellow petals. “I thought it was over as well. They finished the potion, just in time, it seems. I took my first dose last night. ”
“That’s wonderful, my dear.”
Something about the way the woman holds herself reminds Hermione of an overgrown spider. That kind in Australia, that are about a hundred times larger than they need to be and more venomous than Voldemort’s dead snake. Hermione stretches her mouth into a smile. “I’m to go back next week for another dose.”
Narcissa shines. “Oh, darling.” Is she tearing up? “I’m so happy.”
“It’s experimental,” Hermione snaps. “It could still fail.”
“I know, I know, darling.” She’s still smiling that vapid smile, but hiding it now behind her spidery fingers. “But it’s a start, isn’t it?”
“Right,” says Hermione. “It’s a start.”
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 1400
Holy mother of god, the library is huge. It’s beautiful. It’s—Jesus—it’s impossible to walk by and pretend she isn’t getting heart palpitations. But Astoria didn’t care for reading, and Narcissa is right next to her and would be suspicious if she reacted the way she wants to react.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 1800
Hermione had been a voyeur to many of Astoria’s most private exchanges. Had watched her memories obsessively like it was fifth year all over again with exams looming. Now the exam is ‘don’t get caught and killed.’
Astoria’s relationship with Malfoy. She called it strained. She had said it was a thing that trapped them both. That she was sure he resented her for it. That she resented him too.
Why did you marry him? Someone had once asked Astoria. Hermione doesn’t know who. The speaker’s face had been just out of her reach.
You do what you think is necessary, Astoria had said. And when you’re young, so many things seem necessary. Things you find out later are only distractions.
Is that what he is now? A distraction?
No, she had said, you’re my distraction.
And now, with her death, she passed on her torch of a broken relationship to Hermione. How to fix a marriage between a dead woman and a Death Eater? If only Hermione had pushed harder at that memory. Maybe the person Astoria had been speaking to would have more insight. Maybe it was Daphne? But no… that doesn’t seem quite right.
And what to make of Narcissa? What to make of them, these three strange people stuck in this strange house together?
Hermione, masks and smoke, pulls a dead woman’s marionette strings. How to learn their secrets? How to push them out of their nest, one by one?
Narcissa. Vapid, untethered from reality. Floating through life like an origami boat in a bathtub, doomed to sink.
And Malfoy, once an obnoxious childhood bully, now a brooding, evil man. Who are you, Malfoy? How to make you break?
He holds his back so straight, his fork and knife with perfect etiquette. He eats like the Queen herself is in the room with them. And yet she’s watched him disembowel a man. On the battlefield, he’s a dog for the devil.
Hermione doesn’t eat much, and no one comments. A dying woman’s appetite is notoriously feeble. So also, is an anxious spy’s.
Narcissa fills the hollow space with empty chatter. Her voice bounces off the walls like percussion, like a kid banging on pots and pans, annoying and completely non-melodic. Once the plates are clear, she gives him a kiss on the cheek and putters away to bed. “Have a good night,” she says.
Hermione remains at the table, unsure of what comes next. Malfoy still sits there, arms crossed, watching her. He’s still in his Death Eater clothes. Long black robes, steel-toed combat boots. His skull mask is on the table. When he wears it, he becomes identical to all the other soldiers on his side of the war. They fight for their so-called ‘better world’, where their blood proves their worth, yet when they fight in those masks, they lose their identity.
“So Pansy cured you,” he says.
“Maybe.” Hermione meets his eyes, pushing up her walls. “I guess you’re stuck with me.”
He nods, looks away. Rises. The shift of his robes fills the room with that scent again. Darkness, pouring off him in waves.
“We can always hope the new potion fails.”
Bastard. His eyes, steely grey, track her hands where they’ve clenched on her napkin. A twitch of his lips, not quite a smirk. It disappears quickly.
Hermione’s chin is in the air. “Maybe it will. The last one did, after all.”
He co*cks his head. There’s something inhuman about him. There always was. As a child, he masked it with his loud mouth and swagger. Now, as an adult, with the mask of youth removed, what’s left underneath is stark white. A blizzard. Cold and lethal. It’s absurd to be sitting here at a dining room table with him. Pork roast, small talk, and fine china. Hermione had seen him on a mission just last week. Had dueled him, while the rest of her team escaped with their pilfered potion supplies.
It was a successful mission, all things considered. One person on her team lost a few fingers, but there hadn’t been any casualties. The Order stole the supplies they needed and burnt the rest. That tactic is all Ron. He pushed for it hard back at the beginning. Go for the supply chains. Take what the Order needs and destroy the rest. Those supply runs are what has kept the Order going so long, what has kept the enemy scrambling, even though they have all the power.
Malfoy is staring at her. She feels a brush against her mental walls. She shows him flashes from her trove of Astoria’s pilfered memories. Some of her own. The stark white walls of Mungos. Lying in a hospital cot, the patterns in the ceiling texture. Pansy’s face, frowning, examining a convoluted looking diagnostic charm. Malfoy’s presence recedes in her mind, but Hermione doesn’t let her shield fall.
He shifts in his seat, and with relish, she sees a long jagged red line peeking out from the collar of his robes. That was her curse. Her signature curse. Boils. She tweaked it just so, perfected it, so that the normal counter curse is no longer effective. It’ll be at least a few months, if that, until the Death Eaters come up with a counter. They don’t like wasting their time on non-lethal curses. Which is why it's so satisfying to use the boils. It’ll torment the victim for weeks.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 1800
“You’re going somewhere?”
He responds with that blank look again. He co*cks his head. A ghost of a sneer. “Do you care?”
“I—no. I was just wondering.”
The crack of apparition, and he’s gone.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 2200
Some magic leaves traces, and Hermione has trained extensively to learn how to sense it. There’s not a spell or incantation. Sometimes power isn’t flashy like that. It’s quiet. Still. She runs her fingertips over the walls, feeling the weight of the air on her face and arms as she moves. Take a deep breath, focus.
She canvasses her own room first, then the hallway and spare room next to hers. There’s about a million rooms in the Manor, and each one will need to be thoroughly examined. How to search each one without alerting the elves and the other residents? She’ll have to go slow, be cautious.
This whole damned mission is an exercise in being slow and cautious. As much as Hermione likes a good plan, spending her formative years with Harry and Ron, where not even one of her carefully handcraft plans went the way it was supposed to, taught her how to improvise. To trust her gut.
It’s gotten her in trouble over the years, her proclivity to go off script on missions.
At the end of the hall, there's a shift. Malfoy. The places he goes most often are soaked in traces of dark magic. Like breadcrumbs in a forest, or a golden thread in a maze, she can feel where he’s been. The war bleeds out of him, it puddles in his wake.
Here, there’s a window, the same Hermione stood at this morning. Outside is Narcissa’s garden. In the distance, a pine tree with a swing. A pathway, white cobblestone. Hedges trimmed into shapes. Pegasus, hippogriff, dragon, chimera.
But she’s not looking for Malfoy’s signature, she’s looking for Voldemort’s. She can feel traces of it in the dark mark on her arm, but other than that, she hasn’t sensed it yet in this house. And she spent enough time with that vile locket to recognize it when she finds it.
Malfoy may lead her to it, yet.
SAT, 05 JUN 04, 2300
How is she supposed to complete her mission if this damned man is never home? Gone all day fulfilling “mission reports” and now god knows where. Probably drunk in a gutter or passed out inside some whor*.
SUN, 06 JUN 04, 0200
The light flicks on outside her door. The sound of running water. Heaving.
Darkness.
He doesn’t join her in her bed. Off to sleep elsewhere—a spare bed, couch, back alley. Astoria never knew, didn’t care.
Malfoy is as likely to let information slip around Astoria as he is around Hermione f*cking Granger.
