Of The Stars || a collection ||

With Delicate Hands

With Delicate Hands
by EMPG22HoPe

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Honey, you're familiar like my mirror years ago

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Astoria had always known who Draco Malfoy is. She was two years his senior at Hogwarts, and had not been a kind man. During their school days, she would often see him bullying other students, looking down on muggle-borns like they were a speck under his boot, and using his wealth and family name as a means of getting what he wanted.

In short, he wasn't exactly the kind of person she would want to bother spending her days with.

But such is her life, and the reintroduced pureblood tradition of arranged marriages.

It made her sick to her stomach just think about it. The particular tradition had been long abandoned. But when the Dark Lord insists that pure-bloods must contain their bloodlines, as per his decree, one simply cannot say no.

And Astoria never did have a choice. Not since Voldemort won. And not since she fought in the "wrong side", earning her months of deprivation of choice and an excess amount of torture for fighting for what she had felt was right.

If she wished to keep her life, and her family's, she must marry. Or she will have wiped the entire Greengrass bloodline for all to see. She just did not think that Draco would be one of the bachelors that took an interest in seeing her today.

When the Malfoys entered the space of her family's drawing room, she immediately met Draco's gaze. He held a stoic look, not giving anything away. He was dressed impeccably in all-black, which made her feel as though he had come here for someone's funeral. His grey eyes searched her green ones curiously before a sudden sense of recognition crossed them.

"Cassandra, dear, perhaps you should fetch a house elf for this... mess." Narcissa, clad in emerald robes, twisted her face in disapproval as she jutted her chin towards the broken tea cup on the floor.

Astoria pursed her lips in guilt. It had been her blasted nerve damage, one that she's earned from all those cruciatus curses sent upon her not too many months ago, that had caused such a mess.

Her mother, Cassandra, blushed furiously. Instead of calling for a house elf, of which the Greengrasses had none, she brandished her wand and cast a silent repairing charm. The tea cup clicked and clanked together, reforming to its former piece once more before it gathered as a whole back on the middle table where a set of tea and biscuits were prepared.

"Shall we?" Cassandra asked, gesturing towards the sofas for the Malfoys.

Astoria took several steps back, taking her place on one of the softer cushions next to her mother. The Malfoys sat across them with backs straightened to mere perfection.

"I daresay, your house, Cassandra... it's not very up to par as it used to be." Lucius said, his cold gaze shifting amongst the furniture. "Where is Cepheus?"

Astoria froze. The mention of her missing father made the hairs on her skin rise. She was inflamed by the audacity of Lucius Malfoy, for it was obvious how everyone in the Sacred Twenty-Eight already knew where her father was. He was in the Ministry, working day and night, to make up for his daughter's crimes, for the side she had chosen in the Battle of Hogwarts. And taking curses to his frail body as an additional "workload" to his already mountain-full of one.