The last Petal

Draco Malfoy had always seen himself as not a good person. He'd noticed that the way he was brought up was met with rejection, disgust and disdain by the wider wizarding world. One can only imagine what impact this might have on a child, being surrounded by coldness and hate. He grew to resent himself, and slowly, unnoticeably, he locked himself away. People who were cold to him were met with ice, those who feared him were taught they had every reason to do so, and those who seemed to care were sent away, called weak for 'feeling'. He built around himself a castle of solitude that no one dared to enter, for fear they may never return. And so the lost prince stayed alone, with servants that seemed nothing more than mere furniture. Over time he was simply forgotten, though staying present still unnoticed by most.

His parents had once taught him he ought to be seen, be the king in the spotlight with everyone else at his feet. Now, surrounded by shadows he couldn't bare the feeling of letting them down. He didn't know how to make himself seen, so he growled and screamed and showed nothing but claws and horns. Making noise was the only way he knew to be heard. Of course this just drew people away even more, and stuck in his self made prison he became the beast people saw -and he himself feared- him to be.

Yet one day a light found its way into his silent stone fort in the shape of a girl. He didn't know her name, had never even noticed her, for she was a year or more younger than him, a mere unimportant 4th grader. But one day he found her wandering the corridors, crying. She'd found a part of the castle he'd thought no one but him ever knew. Startled, Draco had watched her silently. He hadn't been confronted with a situation like this before, so he stayed in the shadows. But something about her drew him in, maybe how she was so unlike and yet similar to him. She was carrying a book, and though reddened from crying, her eyes still carried a spark of life, of love and of intelligence. He knew he could never go up to her, he wasn't allowed to help her because then within seconds his carefully constructed barrier would break and set free all the emotions he was trying so hard to hide, but still in that moment he wanted to more than anything else. Finally, he couldn't bare it anymore, so he left her alone only after using some of his magic to warm up their dark corridor a bit.

The next day he couldn't help himself, he had to figure out who the girl he had seen was. Answer came in form of a prefect who he'd decided to ask. The prefect was unusually professional, and apart from a comment about 'I don't think I've ever heard you speak before.', he gave Draco no shit, which was rare and appreciated. So, the boy found out that his magical girl was named Astoria Greengrass, who had drawn the rejection of her family by being sorted into Ravenclaw, and then, mere days later, had gotten the same from her house for the simple reason that she didn't seem very interested in science, but rather read fiction and spent time inventing more or less useful technology.

From this Draco inferred that he had -in fact- been right, she was nothing like him at all. Except for the fact that she was an outcast. What bothered him though, was the worry about what she might have cried for. He assumed it could have just been due to the general bullying, but somehow this seemed unlikely, since she had had to endure that for 3 full years already, and she seemed to be quite strong. So, he went researching. The Hogwarts Library held a small assortment of newspapers, which though having been more promising than any of the old books, still brought no resolution, since they too were outdated. Lacking any other alternatives, Draco had to ask some of the other students. Often they turned him away, looked at him weird or fled, but a rare few did give him the information he desired. Astoria had apparently recently lost her father who had been locked up in st.Mungos insane ward after suffering a head trauma during a werewolf attack. On top of this, with both her parents gone -she'd never had a mother- her wider family had seized the opportunity promise her hand in marriage to a certain Jonathan Carrow, known for being a rough and brutal guy.