Choices

Chapter 4

(Trigger warning!!! Mention of self-harm)

Draco's POV:

After the war, I had fled with my parents and Astoria to the safe house we owned in the middle of the ocean. If you had tried to look for us without a map, you wouldn't find us. The house has charms placed on it that only let's a Malfoy see it, otherwise you would just see water.

A month after we arrived at the safe house, I was talking to Astoria while she was writing to her mother where she was and how she was doing. She had been wearing a long sleeve shirt, and her left sleeve had been rolled up, and I had seen scars on her forearm.

"Astoria, what are these from?" I asked.

She looked at me, then looked at her paper, then at me again. She didn't answer.

"Astoria...." I pried.

She turned her gaze away from me and said quietly, "I...I....I did it myself."

"Why?" I asked simply.

"Because....I....loved someone once....and.....I'll never see them again."

At this she had begun to sob, so I pulled her to me and held her. I understood how she felt, I went through the same thing earlier in my life.

After that she told me everything about her and Luna. It was beautiful, what they had had.

I asked her,"Why didn't you stay at the war? Why did you come with my family?"

"I knew that our parents would want us to continue the bloodline and produce an heir, so I came with you to make that decision easier."

That was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.

Two years after that, I proposed.
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My mother and Astoria were eating dinner a month after my father was sent to Azkaban. I had come downstairs looking ravishing as usual, but I was late. My mother knew something was going on, as I am typically very punctual.

I had gone in front of Astoria, and kneeled on one knee.

"Dearest Astoria Greengrass, you are beautiful, resourceful, and very kind, especially to me. You have helped me go through so much in my life, weather it was good or bad. You helped me see the goodness in the world, and for that I thank you from the depths of my soul." At this point, I took my hand out from behind my back, holding a small box. She put her hand over her mouth, tears in her eyes.

"Will you marry me?"

Of course she said yes. I mean, who can resist my flawlessness?

Now, she and I live in a quaint little manor in the forest. It's smaller than Malfoy manor, god rest it's soul, but it is still big enough for even the Weasly family to live in.

Every day, I go to work at St. Mungo's to help people who are hurt. I am a healer. I was sick of hurting people, I never wanted to in the first place. So, I put myself as far away from that as I could be by doing the opposite.

Every day I come home, eat dinner and have small talk with Astoria, and then lock myself away in my room where I can cry without anyone's pity. I wish I had told Harry. I really do. But now he's got the woman of his dreams and a son.

There's nothing I can do, nothing I can say. I am nothing but an old nemesis to him, and that's all I'll ever be.

As I sit on my bed in my room now, I look down at the scars on my left arm. On the ever present dark mark that branded me as 'evil' and 'untrustworthy'. I had cut my wrist so much that I was unconscious one time, I was so sick of it being there.

I don't cut anymore, but I absentmindedly scratch at it. I wish it wasn't there. I wish I had Harry.

I wish things could change.