Apricity || D. Malfoy x Original Character

Chapter 23- Help

Anastasia Redmare wasn't who she thought she was. Truthfully, her name wasn't even Anastasia Redmare, it was Alexandria Rainbrooke. However, she had to keep up the facade of Anastasia for a little longer.

It felt odd to her, knowing everything about her past, or at least most of it. After getting her memories back, she felt like there was this great divide between Alexandria, the girl she was before her parent's death, and Anastasia, the role she had assumed since. She hadn't lived much after what Alaris called "the accident". She hadn't been anywhere or done anything significant. She met Alastair, she went to Beauxbatons, she became an assassin. That was basically everything her life had been, and none of it was her choice.

Now, Ana was walking through the misty morning air to meet Draco Malfoy, the boy she was supposed to kill, who she was now trying to save.

She didn't mean to fall for Draco. He was supposed to be a target, a quick and easy kill. But then he left her favorite flowers in her room on her birthday, he saved her ass in potions, he kept her company when she watched the rain and painted the clouds, he listened when she spoke and he set up a spot just for her to watch the rain, he searched for future careers with her when they were both uncertain, he saved Cat multiple times, he brought her to her room when she was drunk, and he brought her chocolate. What more can be said about the boy's character?

So now she owed it to him to explain to him why the girl he trusted, the girl he stole a kiss from in the hallway, tried to kill him.

She walked down to the collection of boulders and rocks outside the Forbidden Forest where he was waiting, and stood with him until either spoke up.

"I was going to go on the run but you deserve, after everything, to know why I was going to kill you."

"Go on." He replied, looking away at the castle in the distance.

Anastasia went through everything, how she went back to Alaris' house after the battle and soon enough was recruited to take the woman's place as an assassin. She explained how the mission ended up with her and she had no choice but to go to Hogwarts, despite not wanting to hurt him. She explained how over the past few months, she slacked off because she got to know him but when everything came together she spiraled and wanted to get it all over with. She told him about what would happen if she failed, and how she got her memories back the closer she got to him. Once she was done, he resumed staring off into the distance, contemplating how he should react.

"Aren't you going to laugh at me, fight me, call me evil, run away, or something?" She asked.

Draco looked back at her with a blank expression. He sighed and sat down on the grass, leaning against a rock. He nodded his head to indicate for her to sit down next to him and she followed, confused.

"At the end of fifth year, there was battle at the Ministry and my dad was imprisoned in Azkaban for being a Death Eater. The Dark Lord decided I would take his place, and I was initiated that summer. He gave me a task to repair a vanishing cabinet, let Death Eaters into the school, and eventually kill Dumbledore. I tried many ways to kill the headmaster without letting my aunt into the school and putting the students in danger, I even put Katie Bell under the imperius curse to bring the old man a cursed necklace. But she touched it and it cursed her instead, so that plan backfired."

"Why would she touch it?"

"I have no idea, I wonder all the time, my instructions were straightforward. Anyway, I poisoned mead and put Madame Rosmerta under the imperius curse to give Slughorn the bottle to gift to Dumbledore, but Weasley ended up drinking it and got poisoned. Then, at the end of the year, I'd finished the cabinet and it was time to kill Dumbledore. I didn't do it, I couldn't, but I was punished for that."