when they became villains [draco malfoy] {book 2}

Year 6 - 142

Astrid had stayed up the whole night again.

She was floating through life without a real sense of direction - any sense of right or wrong - what was real or not. Sleep-deprived and pushing down her real emotions, the girl had begun dissociating at times, watching her life from a distance with an addicting sense of calmness.

During days she was a smiling zombie. At nights a flourishing creature. She sat in the common room, having given up on just laying in her bed, and played quiet music on her radio, plotting murder. Yet still, no real plan had come to her. The best thing she had come up with was a lie of why it was that she was sitting in the common room. Once a seventh-year prefect had walked by, asking her what she was up to at night. Astrid had rolled her eyes and told her she was doing her Care of Magical Creatures homework. The reason Astrid liked the lie so much was simply for she found it humour-fully true. Dumbledore was a magical creature she was thinking of taking care of. That and sometimes he really was trying to complete her homework. 

One night, sitting in the common room as per usual her stomach had churned in hunger. Her mind instantly went to the kitchens and cakes and she couldn't help but smile at the thought. Maybe she didn't eat much during the day - she didn't do much of anything during the day - but at night and when filled with energy, sometimes she even liked to go and have a snack or two. Astrid liked to call them therapy cakes for they were absolutely lovely and comforting whenever she found herself at yet another dead end. 

After tucking her things back away in the dorm, Astrid walked the familiar way to the kitchens. The colours of the walls and the paintings all around almost mocked her as she walked by. Almost as if those very walls and painting had been the very things that had sucked all colour out of her, leaving her to hide behind a mask of black. Because even if she tried pretending she was perfectly fine, the lack of colour within wasn't enough to pull the full display she had known how to do just a few months ago.

Astrid tickled the pear and a doorknob appeared, allowing her to enter the kitchens. Hastily she made her way through them and past the few elves that had been assigned to guard the rooms at night. She walked over to the room she had visited many upon many times before. A room where Rosier had worked together with the Weasley twins. A room where she had hidden away if they ever played hide and seek in the bottom floors of the school - hiding there more so for the fact she had an unlimited assort of sweets and not because it was a genuinely good hiding spot. A room where Astrid refused to remember she and Malfoy had shared their first kiss.

The radio still playing quietly in her hand, Astrid bopped her head side to side as she whipped open the door to the room, but suddenly froze when she noticed Rosier, who stood by one of the tables there, halt her movements too. 

Nothing but the sound of the radio could be heard in the rectangular room, echoing off the empty walls and even emptier cabinets sprawled through it. After the Weasley twins had left school, it had always looked much emptier. Rosier looked rather lonely, standing there alone, but then again... the girl liked being alone.

"Hi," Astrid smiled suddenly, moving forwards and setting her radio down on a chair.

Rosier gave the girl a long lookover, contemplating. 

Astrid ignored the suspicious gaze and walked over, still smiling. She questioned innocently. "What are you doing?"

Astrid eyed the table and Rosier's smeared hands. Many transparent plastic balls had been cracked open in half and spread across the surface of the table - some empty, some filled with some powder or substance, depending on the half-ball.

A long pause followed before Rosier spoke carefully, her eyes still scanning Astrid. "Working. I've promised to get the right proportions to George and Fred before Halloween."