Our curses and wounds

T W E L V E

Theo feels the smoke enter his lounges as breathes in and out. Funny how someone could get used to things like that. He still remembered the first time he smoked a cigarette. In an attempt to be rebellious he smoked with Mattheo who had stolen the cigarettes of his mother. Back then he had such a bad coughing attack that his eyes started watering. He smoked the cigarette to the end though, and then another, and then he was addicted.

Suddenly he heard footsteps behind himself, maybe someone came up here to admire the view. (Which, he had to admit, was quite beautiful today. Fog was slowly lifting in the fields and from the forest, as light gave it a silvery touch.) He looked around and looked eyes with the girl from the train. Astra, supposed sister of Draco Malfoy stood there, staring at him looking just as calm and collected as she always did. If she was like her brother, she'd start shouting in a second. She'd say stat she will tell the teacher and that he stinks and that smoking was for muggles and mudbloods, but then never tell anyone.

"Can I have one?" She asked, while looking at the cigarettes. He looked at her, so startled that he didn't even realize how he extended his arm to hand her one. He also didn't realize how she didn't have a lighter, but as soon as the cigarette was in between her lips it started glooming.

There was silence for sometime before she spoke again. "I quit, you know? It's just nice to have at least some familiarity." He looked at her. He didn't take her for a girl like that before. She looked like one of the proper girls, who would keep their name clean and already had their eyes set on their future husband, a girl like Pansy. Usually girls like her would be scared of coming within a five meter radius of something as muggle as this. The only other girl who would smoke with them was Daphne Greengrass and she would only do it at parties if Mattheo was near. To be fair, Mattheo and him were the only boys in Slytherin that smoked, besides maybe a few older years, but most of them already graduated last year.

"And what lesson are you skipping?", this time Theo was the one to break the silence. His voice was a little to loud than he intended which made him realize that he had spent an entire train ride with this girl but this was the first thing he actually had a conversation with her. The silence between them beforehand just felt comfortable and natural. "I'm not skipping anything, actually." She looked at Theo with raised eyebrows, "But I take it that you are then?" He shot her a disbelieving glance. Still, he answered truthfully. "Divination. I figured that I could, since Professor Trelawney won't notice anyway." "I really don't get this place. This is supposed to be the best school in erm... Britain or the World?" Theo chuckled. "Well that's what they tell us. Why? Didn't you have questionable teachers back in Germany?"

She scanned him up and down, looking like she was anticipating what to say. "Questionable, yes. But carless enough to let us slip? No.", after a brief moment of silence she added, "Do you not get punished?" He took a long drag from his cigarette, "I mean we get detention, worst case scenario is getting dragged into the forbidden forest in the middle of the night or having to clean some classroom under Flich's supervision." For a moment she looked to the side, Theo could almost see her thinking. What about his stament had been so confusing? Finally she looked back at him. "What is that?" "What is what? Do you mean Filch? He's the very unpleasant looking caretaker at Hogwarts." When she still didn't look like she understood he went on, "Looks like he only has a few strands of hair left fighting for dear life and always a cat with him he's weirdly close to? You'll see him around."

Slowly, Theo saw her as less confident. She had started to flick her cigarette again and again and when she started to speak, there was a feint accent she didn't have before and he couldn't place. It didn't sound German. Russian maybe? Then again, it was so faint it could be from anywhere.

"I meant the other word... Detention?" It was weird to see a Malfoy struggle with the English language. (Besides Lorenzo who somehow had ancestors anywhere in the world so you couldn't make out where he was originally from, most of the boys in their year didn't come from Britain originally. Of course there was Blaise where it was obvious he came from Africa, but Mattheo was from Spain and Theo himself was half Italian. It used to be hard for him to properly emphasize sentences after his grandfather had taken him to live in Italy for a lot of his childhood, or what had been left of it.) "It's when you have to stay after classes or the weekends have to do something a teacher tells you to do, traditionally extra homework." Astra scoffed. "That's your punishment?" Theo looked at her and cocked an eyebrow, "How did you get punished then?"

All warmth, if you could even have called it that before, left Astra's face. She looked at him coldly and only responded with, "Effectively." He shuddered under her gaze. Whatever it meant, it was nothing he wanted at Hogwarts. Their silence was loud and uncomfortable, nothing like before. Theo wished himself back to the point where they hadn't talked to each other yet.

"I knew I'd find you here!" Mattheo's voice came booming through as he reached the top of the stairs. "Oh? You have company? I'm Mattheo." He eyed Astra shortly and when no one answered him he just talked on. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything." "You're not." Astra responded a little too fast, then took such a long drag that she might have just inhaled a quarter of her cigarette at once. "Great, mind giving me the rest of that cigarette, sweetheart?" She handed it to him. "It's almost done, don't smoke the filter. It's really not a good Idea." Again Mattheo just smirked.

When Astra turned back to Theo, it was as if the last part of their conversation didn't exist. She smiled at him. "Thank you, I really needed that, I'll continue exploring the castle now." Only when the sound of her steps had vanished, he realized he hadn't even told her his name.

"You recon Draco would be mad if I shagged his sister?" Mattheo laughed, completely ignoring Theo did not find any humor in his comment. "Don't you have Daphne already?" he gritted out. "Sure, but we're only casual, like friends with benefits. It's not like I or she wouldn't sleep with anyone else." Theo looked to the side, "Then do whatever you want."

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This is somewhat a stretch of the imagination, since I don't personally smoke. I usually just accompany my friends and my most experience with it was a vape a friend of mine wanted me to taste. My reluctance actually has a reason and that is that I have some sort of intolerance to nicotine? It just makes me feel nauseous and that runs in the family. My brother once smoked a cigarette at a party and then just violently puked for the rest of the night lmao. but if you ever need a lighter, I got you.

I made plausible class schedules with the little information we get in the books. I also discovered that with this amount of teachers it is simply impossible to teach all classes. (Astronomy? Harry says its always taught at midnight. We have seven years of students of which we have two classes, which makes it 14 classes to be taught and five days of the week. How is that possible if the classes have to be at midnight and there's only one teacher and classroom for it?)

This is also written on a random school night. Have mercy with me. There's probably a lot of mistakes.

I am so tierd I'm starting to forget words, but at the same time its not like I NEEDED to finish this chapter. I guess I just think it's fun. (I honestly have no idea why I didn't go to sleep, I swear nothing is more important to me than sleep. If someone would tell my I'd die during the next 24h I would go to sleep.)

See you next time then,
xoxo anno 💋💋💋