Draco Malfoy felt a little stab of guilt as he boarded the Hogwarts Express for his third year.

He had barely seen Astrid all summer. Pansy, along with Crabbe and Goyle, had been around almost every day. And Draco definitely felt he needed to keep his alliances safe, especially with things like the Chamber of Secrets opening up. Being seen consorting with Muggles wasn't going to help his reputation.

But he found he had missed her, and when sat with Pansy, he often thought about her on that swing.

As his third year went by, he had found it was yet another eventful one. He had had an extremely close call with death in their new class - Care of Magical Creatures. That stupid great oaf, Hagrid, had set a highly dangerous monster on the whole class: a Hippogriff. It had almost torn off his arm as Draco had innocently tried to mount it on Hagrid's questionable orders.

That bloody chicken.

Joy of joys - Draco had managed to get his father to sentence it to death, but then somehow it had escaped at the last minute. Draco felt for sure the golden trio had been behind it. They were hanging around quite suspiciously just before the execution - when that Mudblood decided to beat him up through no provocation by him.

"Did you manage to keep hold of all your teachers this time?" Astrid joked when he met up with her by the swings at the start of the following summer.

"Er, no." Draco admitted, trying to work out how to explain to her that it turned out a werewolf teaching students wasn't a great idea after all. "One got... sick."

Draco studied the girl next to him. He couldn't help but notice how much older she looked. He hadn't seen her since Christmas and she had definitely changed - she looked... pretty.

He quickly looked away again, his heart hammering uneasily. He didn't like to think about her in that way. He knew being a friend with a Muggle was bad enough, but to have any kind of romantic feelings - that would be so wrong. It was completely unnatural.

"What do you do to the poor teachers in that school?" she laughed, her blue eyes lighting up as she did so. Draco's stomach gave an involuntary flip which he desperately tried to ignore.

"It's the post - they say it's cursed. I just pity the poor fool who goes next," he drawled, wondering desperately how he could make her laugh again.

"Cursed?! Surely you don't believe in all that mumbo jumbo?" she asked incredulously, "next you'll be telling me that unicorns and dragons are real!"

Draco laughed uncomfortably, tugging at his collar, which suddenly felt very tight around his neck.

"Yeah," he mumbled, "how silly would that be..."

"So... how's Pansy?" she asked, and Draco caught the tiny tinge of bitterness in her voice. He couldn't help but feel a little joy in his heart.

He shrugged, "I dunno - she's just Pansy." To be honest - he really didn't want to talk about her. He'd had enough of her for the past year.

There was something else he wanted to talk about instead. "You'll never guess - my father has managed to get me tickets to the Quidditch World Cup this summer!"

Astrid looked at him in complete bafflement. "There's a World Cup? I thought it was just a thing that your school played?"

Draco cursed himself again. He kept saying too much, sometimes he would think it just be easier to tell Astrid everything - she wouldn't tell, although - she probably wouldn't believe him either. Not after all this time.

"Yeah, well it's like a special league of schools," Draco mumbled, feeling flustered at nearly been caught out.

"Well, I'm sure it will be fun," she shrugged, thankfully not pushing it, "I sure wish I had something like that to look forward to."

Draco suddenly wished he could invite her along - how wonderful it would be to show her a piece of his world. But he knew it would never be possible.

And then - when he witnessed what he witnessed in the aftermath of the game - he was glad she hadn't been there.

He knew his father was one of the masked men torturing those family of Muggles. He had stood, watching from the trees as that Muggle family were tossed around and around in the sky.

He couldn't help but think of Astrid, and it made him feel nauseous. If his father ever got wind of his involvement with a Muggle... well, he dreaded to think.

***

This summer had been a lot better than the last. I saw Draco much more often, and he didn't seem that bothered about rushing back to Pansy this time.

But saying goodbye before we started our fourth years was harder than I'd anticipated.

He had returned from his World Cup game acting a little strange. It was as though he couldn't quite look me in the eye. When I asked him about it, he would abruptly change the subject.

And then the night before I last saw Draco, my dad had been particularly brutal.

"Have you been hiding my fucking beer again?" he had spat at me when I had returned home to our messy flat after spending the day hiding out at the playground.

My heart sank - usually he was passed out by this time, but he had obviously drank the place dry too soon and was looking for a scapegoat.

Which was me. It was always me.

As I felt my body being thrown against the wall, I closed my eyes and, with all my effort, tried to make my mind leave my body. It was a technique I'd learnt to use over the years.

I'm not here, I'm not with my dad.

I tried not to think about how painful the repeated blows to my body felt as fists and feet connected to every part of me.

I'm with Draco. We're running through the woods, racing to the river.

"You fucking useless bitch! Why can't you be more like your mother?!"

White blond hair. Silver grey eyes which twinkled whenever his face creased up with laughter.

The pummelling stopped. But there was sobbing now. The worst part. I would take the kicking and hitting a thousand times over to stop from hearing my dad break down like this.

"I'm sorry, pumpkin," he wept over and over again, as I blindly crawled across the floor to my bedroom, leaving him in a broken huddle on the ground, "I'm sorry..."

He was always sorry.

But never enough not to do it again.