A/N: I couldn't make a decision for a song so I chose two. The second one fits the second half the best...and I'm a Bob Dylan addict I couldn't leave him out. It hasn't been long but I was done and I thought I might be just as well off to post this now.

Chapter 12

Don't think twice, it's alright

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end
The End - The Doors

I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's alright
Don't think twice, it's alright - Bob Dylan

She stumbles in wearing a pair of those big sunglasses that make you look like a bug. Even though it's night and she's inside she doesn't take them off.

Every time she moves bones in her body try to break free of the skin that covers them. Her bones look too big for her body. The enormous handles of her collar bones with her pearls riding them. The stair case of her ribs in her chest. Every bone looks enormous in comparison to her. I know something is wearing on her to make her look so thin and fragile.

Her hair is hair.

Her lips aren't scarlet they're just lips.

Without her usual splash of colour she looks quite grey.

She sits down across from me in the booth. Every man in the bar has his eyes on her. Some look like they want to throw her on the ground and have her right there, some I fear will. Others look more interested in her pearls, and probably whatever else worth anything she has on her.

"Hi." she says, her lips a tight thin line when she finishes speaking.

All the eyes turn to me with a hostility as she speaks to me.

Jealousy. The birds of a feather rule applies here.

"You came." I smile. Flashback humour.

She doesn't smile, her lips stay set in that thin line.

Looking closer in the dim light her lips look blue rather than just pale.

Light blue, jewelry-box baby blue, vicodin blue.

I watch her remove her sunglasses. She's only doing it so I can better get a sense of her emotion. There are dark circles under her eyes and I understand why she was wearing those sunglasses. That paired with her blue lips she looks like the walking dead.

"You're a little late Pansy," I say checking my watch, "I was about to leave."

"Maybe that would have been better..." she shakes her head, "I had to prepare. You're lucky I came at all."

I wonder prepare for what? I don't ask because I think I don't want to know.

She tells me I have to stop. This is out of hand. She never intended for me to fall in love.

The little waitress walks over before Pansy can finish speaking, "Can I get you anything?" she asks, and I have a feeling its only because she wants to get a better look at Pansy.

"A Scotch on the rocks." she answers like she's been trained to. It's like a Pavlov's dog situation.

The waitress nods and walks over to the bar. She comes back in a few seconds with Pansy's drink.

"Poured it myself. I don't trust the bar tender."

Pansy smiles the way she does when she's trying to dazzle, "Give it to him, he'll need it more than me."

The waitress places the scotch in front of me. She walks away slow like she's waiting to hear what Pansy has to say.

Pansy waits too though for the waitress to be out of earshot. It makes me nervous, she's never cared if people heard what she says before.

"Drink up," Pansy says nodding at the little drink with the sad looking chunks of ice floating in it.

I choke down the cheap alcohol. It makes me warmer. I love the feeling of it flooding my stomach, starting at my core to warm me from the inside out.

She watches me until I finish before speaking.

"I would have stopped sooner," she says, "but I liked it a little bit. Anyone would, someone ready to jump off a cliff for them. It's wrong though...I see that now."

"But, we're friends Pans. Friends care about one another."

"Friends," she echoes bitterly. She points out we've never been friends. We've always been something. We don't know how to be friends. She says she hates to do this, stop seeing me she means, but it's necessary.

No, things are good. I tell her, things for me have never been better. I need her to keep me sane. I need her to keep my world from turning upside down.

I reach across the table and take her hand in mine. her hand is so cold I imagine that's why she's letting me touch her. For the heat and probably no further reason. I can feel the bones of her hands and her muscles tighten as I touch her.

Her hand looks like a positively skeletal, just bones dipped in blue tinted wax.

She laughs bitterly.

"You don't need me," she says pieces of her hair falling in her eyes and getting caught in her eyelashes. Like that first night, "not anymore."

"Yes, yes I do. I need you to call me Malfoy. To dance with me. To love me."

She looks up "You mean for you to pretend I love you?" she asks.

Sure she picks now to be virtuous. Now when I've become dependant on her she decides to leave.

No, she can't. She loves me. She's been sleeping with me. Sure it's been a while but she still has to love me.

She shakes her head. "I've taught you what I know about how to survive. You have to jump in head first to achieve anything. I can't help you anymore."

It might be just me, but I think her lips are bluer than when she came in.

"Draco, I'm not even supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be at the apothecary getting a potion," she looks around like searching for an alternate exit, a quick escape.

I tell her I'm supposed to be shopping, but I'd rather sit in this shit-hole of a bar and have a conversation with her.

"A conversation," a glimmer of a smile is in her eyes. It seems almost sarcastic.

"Happiness can only be achieved through depression. Once someone has felt true pain they are free to feel true happiness," she says, "maybe this is your great pain."

Maybe this is it for me. Maybe the rest of my life will be perfect because she's gone.

Maybe not.

"Look," she says, "it would make things a lot easier for you if you would just give up. Let me go. Easier for both of us."

Her hand is relaxed in mine. It's beginning to warm up from my own heat.

"Pans, why?" I ask, hoping she doesn't have a good enough reason that I can't dispute.

She sighs, she doesn't want to hurt me.

"Leaving," I tell her, "hurts me."

"No me leaving is what's best, you just can't see it."

I ask what could possibly make her act the way she has been. I haven't seen her in weeks. I miss her and now I'm just never going to see her?

She tells me not to be stupid, we'll see each other, we run in the same circles.

I growl really low and say she knows that's not what I meant.

"It's what you have to settle for. Everyone settles once Draco. Don't pretend you're the first person not to get what you want." She shifts in her seat and puts on a tight smile I've only ever seen one time before. That night outside Hogwarts. I take this to be her sadistic look.

"I don't settle for less than what I want, I'm a Malfoy," I say with a proud smile. The exact face you would picture on someone saying 'I'm a Malfoy'.

"I don't want to hurt you," the words spill quickly like she can't get them out of her mouth as fast as she can think them.

I can tell I've said something, pressed some button that ended her patience. If only I could figure out what.

She looks at me her eyes burning like the cigarette she's absent of at this point. Her eyes showing me some hostility I can't understand.

She wants me to know I've forced her to this.

I say I've not forced her to do anything.

She rolls her eyes and says right. All sarcastic, but then she shifts crossing her legs under the table.

Her toe brushes my shin as she switches position.

She bites her lip apprehensively. She pushes her hair away from her eyelashes and looks at me like she's scared, but it's only a glimmer of fear so fast it could be anything else. Then they're dull and glazed over once more.

I tell her to get on with it. If it really will destroy me - and I don't think it will - I'd like her to get on with it.

Her brow furrows and her hand tightens around mine. For a second I think she might be hurt by my words but then her eyes are burning and it's me holding her limp hand again.

"I'm pregnant."

There's the soft thud of her hand hitting the table along with the clank of her wedding ring as I drop her hand.

A knee-jerk reaction.

My eyes are wide and my jaw is hanging open. I feel like a cartoon. I can't do anything about it though. I'm frozen.

"Oh relax you can close your mouth, it's not yours." she gathers her hands into her lap trying to transfer the warmth I gave her left hand to her other skeleton hand.

"So It's Theodore's then?" I ask, recovered only enough to put out the first dumb question my daft brain can push through my lips.

She shoots me a look and says of course it's Theodore's.

This is one of those if looks could kill moments. I actually wonder if maybe in a past life Pansy was a basilisk.

"He thinks it's okay. They'll put me on bed-rest and use something called -" she fishes around in her pocket and pulls out a little piece of paper that's clearly been folded and re-folded "- an ultra sound machine to monitor the baby." she finishes.

"So because Theo knocked you up you're just going to leave me?"

She looks at me now as if I've said I want her to give birth so I can swallow it.

Yes, she says, Theodore is the only person who's ever stuck around. He's hopeful about this. He really thinks it will work. "I think it's the least I can do to try."

"It's been almost two months since my last drink, I haven't smoked in nearly three months now. Vicodin same thing. I'm trying to get myself back. This is the way to do it."

She was expecting a baby to save her from herself.

"Don't be so hopeful it's a muggle procedure."

She nods, "Well age is in my favor this time, I mean last time I was only nineteen. Just barely grown up. I was afraid then, now I'm ready. Everything about me is ready. I'm a grownup now. This condition is not confined to the wizarding world alone."

I see it in her eyes, she's not only doing it for Theodore. She's doing it for herself too. She wants to be rid of me, I'm a complication.

"Well, that's great Pansy, I'm happy for you...that is if you can manage not to fuck it up. The best way to predict future behaviour is based on past behaviour."

She stands up swaying on her feet. "I think we're done here," she says.

I say no we're not as she pushes her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose.

She starts to head for the door. I follow her.

She whirls around her hand balled into a fist with one finger out pointing at me like she's ready to really explode. She's about to react to what I said. She's ready to let me have it. I can see it.

Her blue lips are parted as if she's frozen midway through taking a breath.

Then her baby-blue lips press together and the tenants in her neck stretch taut. I can see her pulse thudding in her neck. It's too fast.

"Are you alright Pans?" I grab her wrist which has relaxed from it's former position.

"Do I look alright?" she bites. I just know her eyes are narrowed under her bugish glasses. Narrowed in the 'don't be stupid' kind of way.

"I need to get out," she says pulling against me. With how skinny she's gotten I fear her arm might pull straight out of it's socket. I let her go as not to damage her any more than she already is.

She says she's going home. She won't see me again, and that this time she means it.

She breaks free of my grasp and pulls out her wand just as the little bell above the door tinkles signaling a new customer.

By this time nearly everyone in the bar is watching me. Looking to see what I will do next. I kind of wish it would be something heroic not be frozen to the spot.

I can vaguely hear a voice breaking through into my mind.

"Are you daft?" the voice asks, "Go after her!"

It's that little waitress girl. The only one that might have a chance in the world. Who has the chance not to be trapped by this mindless hell we live in.

I shake my head a few times and follow the waitess' advice.

I run out the door before it can close and I snatch onto Pansy's wrist again.

I say "I know what you're thinking, I know you feel upset."

She screeches making a hawkish noise before ripping off her sunglasses and shooting me a glare.

She says If I knew, really knew, what she was feeling I would not have just put my hand on her.

The vein in her forehead is popping and her neck looks stringy with tenants, "I never, ever wanted you!" she says "I hate you more than any human on earth. You ruined me!" Her voice sounds like she's yelling to keep herself from crying.

She snatches her wrist out of my hand.

This is before she vomits.

She puts her hand on the edge of a dumpster and pukes pink steaming vomit.

I don't do anything I just watch her. She lurches and seizes her stomach inverting.

She eventually straightens up. Her glasses have made their way down her nose being held up by the little up turned point. I can see her eyes, pure anger. Scary kind of raw anger. She takes off her glasses and shoves them in her pocket in a hurried movement.

"Don't help me or anything." her voice is raspy and she has tears running down her cheeks. She uses the back of her hand to wipe them away, but I notice more fall afterward, her eyes aren't watering, she's crying. Out of anger or sadness I can't tell.

I mumble an apology. I just say sorry, I don't tell her it's for not holding her little bit of hair out of her face, for making her cry, for leaving her all those years ago, I just tell her sorry.

"Yeah, I'm used to it. Whoever called it morning sickness is a fucking liar."

Her lips almost look more blue now. She looks like she's just not getting enough air. She doesn't smirk or say my name in her drawl. She just looks at me her eyes burning.

And it's not mine, I remind myself.

She punches the dumpster and says she needs a cigarette.

I tell her to go get some, without thinking. I forget, just for a second with her talking about cigarettes, that you shouldn't smoke pregnant.

She looks like she might fall over at any second. Somehow, by some divine miracle she's able to stay standing and point her wand at me. I would be lying if I said I didn't regret teaching her to duel properly back in sixth year.

She takes a deep breath and comes up close to me. She places an ice-cold hand on my cheek and says, "Sometimes Draco, in the rarest of cases people who are destined to be together are also destined to be miserable together. It doesn't mean we weren't in love. It doesn't mean we won't always be in love. It just means we have that kind of luck."

"No, I'm miserable with Astoria. I've never been miserable with you." I need Pansy. She's all I need, I need her more than my next breath of air.

"Don't talk to me about her, it makes me feel cruel," she looks at the ground, I roll my eyes and I guess she sees it, "I mean it Draco...don't tell me about her you'll be happier with her anyway, you have a child with her."

I watch her gain a second wind in making excuses not to be together, "We're a disaster together and I'm a separate disaster from you. In all honesty, you should be happy to be rid of me. All I can give you is pain."

"How do you know it's not mine Pans?" I ask brushing my fingers over her stomach gently. It feels different, touching her now. She doesn't look any different, her stomach is still flat, it feels like there could be a bulge forming but it's not visible. Yet it feels different.

I pull her closer and she struggles in my arms turning her face this way and that in her sort of useless battle against me.

She looks at me with a certain resolution, her jaw set, "I just know."

"No you don't," I say letting go of her, "how far along are you?"

She exhales in a white puff, she looks almost like she's smoking and she looks like her old self for a moment, annoyed with a little spark in her eye.

"Almost three months..." she says quietly.

"It could be mine then couldn't it?" I ask letting go of her to give her room, like they tell you to do with pregnant women...give them room right?

"No, it's Theodore. He is the father. Not you. Even if it were you...it wouldn't be. Do you understand? I would say I'm sorry but..." she looks at me a moment before she turns and takes a deep breath. I think she might want to convince herself more than me.

"I mean with your pigheadedness aside, it has no scientific value Pansy. What is the likelihood it is my child?" I take her by the shoulders and pull her close and put my wand at her throat. Sometimes there's no other way to get information.

"It doesn't matter, what don't you understand? This isn't a fairytale where you decide you want your morality to win out. Or maybe it is. Morally speaking the right thing is for you to forget about me and go home to your wife and your child. The one you know is yours. He needs you. Not me. Not anymore."

Pure shock value allows me to let go of her.

"Pansy, just tell me what to do! Tell me what you want, please?" I feel so pathetic, begging her like this. It's falling on deft ears anyway.

"If you follow me home, it will be your mistake. I can't guarantee your safety." she says before pointing the wand at herself and apparating away.

I follow her, like she told me not to. I would follow her anywhere.

I know she's apparated to just outside the gates of her house.

And I'm right. She's got her back to me and her hand on the gate like she's debating opening it.

"I told you not to," she clenches her fist around the gate.

Most of her voice is lost to the wind. Up the path a little is her house and the door swings open revealing Theodore.

He begins marching down the path with his hands balled into fists.

"Pansy," he shouts, "were you out drinking?"

"No!" she says her voice laced with worry like she fears he won't believe her.

He's close enough now he can touch her, "Look at me," he instructs placing two fingers under her chin and tilting her head upward.

He relaxes upon seeing her pupils their normal size. And probably he couldn't smell any alcohol on her breath which also contributed to the look of relief he wore.

"I care about this, I've told you," she places a hand on her still flat stomach. I feel a pang to see her look at him like that.

He nods with as much sympathy as I figure he can muster with me standing right there, "I just worry about you," he takes off his jacket and swings it over her shoulders, he then takes his scarf and wraps it around her neck.

"Layers love, remember," he touches her nose.

He looked at his work for a moment, so intent on her I'm beginning to think he's forgotten about me. He smiles a little and I think he might kiss her. He looks at her like I know I never have. There's love there, and though I love her the only way I know how. The best way I know how. It's not enough.

"And you," he turns to me, "what right do you have to be here?"

I decided it better not to answer. Theodore looks the way men look when they might just hit someone, and that combined with how Blaise warned me about him I knew that whatever I said would just dig me in deeper.

"Theodore, he was just leaving," Pansy put her hand on his arm like a reminder or restraint or whatever trying to calm him down in any case.

He looked down at her I can see the pleading in her eyes pleading with him to calm down, to go inside, to let her handle this.

Theodore has his arms crossed over his chest and his feet apart, classic aggressive stance. Pansy is tugging on his arm but with how big he is in comparison to her it's making no difference.

She looks like a canary trying frantically to carry a brick.

I think if he wanted to he could snap her in half like a twig...though to be fair I could probably do that. I don't remember him being so big though.

"You think you love her don't you?" he asks, his voice deep and throaty.

I nod.

"Theodore stop it, let him alone, he'll leave," Theodore ignores her and just stares at me.

He waves his head from side to side with a deep-set frown on his face.

"Draco! Are you mad? Do you have a death wish? Get out of here!" she's actually yelling, but it looks like she's about to go into hysteria from the way she's breathing and her eyes are bugging out.

"This is what I hate about you, all of you think you're in love with her, you love her because she's different, because she's bitter." He says he loves her because she's simply her.

He meant us. Blaise, me and anyone else besides him who's had sex with his wife.

His face was suddenly quite angry "You want to step out? Fine." he shrugs stiffly, "You go get a whore, you don'tscrew another man's wife. You're trash, and you know it Malfoy."

He tells me it's over between me and her, she wants to have his baby, and yes it's his, he insured that much.

"When It comes to her Theodore I think it's her decision who she stays with."

"Draco," she says her head tilted sympathetically to the side, I know what the rest is, she doesn't need to say it, she loves Theodore.

He sneers, "I realize it's her decision you think I would make her do anything she doesn't want to?"

I tell him I think he has in the past.

"You," he thrusts a finger into my chest, "Weren't there. You didn't hold her still while she shook so hard the whole bed felt like it was going to fall apart. You didn't fetch her blankets when she was so cold she couldn't even ask for the blankets without biting her tongue. You weren't there to take the blankets away when she got so hot she would sweat through them. You didn't even try to get her clean."

I scowl, like him providing her with every drug under the sun helped even a little bit, I say.

"Listen Malfoy, you weren't the one who had two miscarriages in as many years so I don't expect you to understand, but don't talk to me about what helped her. What you saw of her those were good days you didn't see her the days when she would sit in the dark all day and not eat a single thing just drink until she fell asleep again. I can't even count the times I satayed up all night just to make sure she was still breathing."

"She," Pansy says through gritted teeth, "is right here! Right fucking here!"

Theodore looks down at her, "Remember, language. You should probably go inside and lay down dear."

His voice is so full of compassion it's startling. How he can go from being so cold with me to speaking to her that way is amazing.

Amazing like it makes you want to blow your brains out...well it does me anyway.

I can see she's ready to cry. Again.

"I don't need to lay down I'm perfectly capable of - of -" she breaks off with a little sob.

Hormones. I remember Astoria Pregnant. Cried about everything from putting on the wrong shoes to getting the wrong kind of cheese at the market.

"Malfoy, if you care about Pansy at all you will remove yourself from this situation. It's too much stress. I realize that the baby may mean shockingly little to you but it's our last chance." He glances down at Pansy and touches her face, "We won't make it through another miscarriage."

By 'we' he means Pansy.

Upon hearing the word 'miscarriage' Pansy buried her face in Theodore's chest. He welcomed her by wrapping an arm around her shoulders and holding her there firmly so I could hardly tell her shoulders were shaking with sobs that the wind drowned out sparing her just that much humiliation.

"So Draco, please don't do this, we don't have the strength."

Again by 'we' he means Pansy.

"So this is it? This is the end Pans?" I ask the back of her head.

"The end sounds so final. Not the end, not forever Draco. We can still be friends. Besides you have Astoria. You have a son Draco, I can't take you from them anymore. It's not right." she's turned her head so she's still against Theodore's chest but she's facing me. Her eyes that caramel colour.

I want to reach out and pull her away with me but I know she won't appreciate that, the way she's clinging to Theodore.

Maybe this is just the end.

Maybe there's nothing left and I'm just pathetic for holding on this long.

"Pansy, you're the worst thing that's ever happened to me," I quoted her.

"I always know when you're lying," flashback humour.

"Yeah Pansy," I look down at my feet and she breaks free of Theodore.

She pushes herself into my arms for a hug. At first I act unresponsive but she takes my arms and pushes so they're around her awkwardly. She's hugging me the way women do only when they're saying a sorrow filled good-bye. With her hips pressed up close and her arms all the way around me with her arms under mine. Like she might try to pick me up.

She brings herself out slightly and looks at me her big brown eyes exactly perfect. The pupils not to dilated even in the dim moonlight.

"I'll miss you," she says placing a kiss on my cheek.

The kiss is so close to my mouth that I can practically taste her. Not like the way she should kiss me in front of her husband. The kiss holds a certain reassurance that I wasn't just nothing to her. That there might be hope.

When she kisses me I feel her wet eyelashes against my cheek.

"Draco Malfoy you're the best thing that ever happened to me." she says too low for Theodore to hear over the wind.

She then lowers herself off her tiptoes which she had to stand on to reach my face. The whole time she remains looking me in the eye.

She then backs away once more.

Theodore looks at me as if it was taking him a real effort not to punch me while his wife pushed herself into my arms and kissed me quite nearly on the lips.

I'm far to glad that I was able to make him look like that to care very much that he's probably quite a bit stronger than me, and twice the brains to back it up.

"Goodbye Malfoy," Theodore says as Pansy turns and starts heading up the path to her house. I imagine she doesn't want me to see her cry. And from the way her steps are fumbling and her shoulders are quivering and hunched she's crying quite hard.

"If it's any consolation," he begins, "and don't take this as more than it is. I think you're the only one who cared for her. Not nearly what she deserved but...more than the others."

Roughly translated that means if he could choose someone for his wife to have an affair with it would be me.

He turns and catches up to Pansy in a few strides. He wraps an arm around her waist and half carries her to the house. I watch them until they close the door.

And I'm alone. I stand there for a moment. I feel raw. It feels like when you get hit in the stomach with a bludger, there's no air. I just want to see her one more time. To have her once more.

I go home, there's nothing left. I don't want to hear Blaise tell me to get another woman. To get over it. I just want to go home.

I'm careful to take off my shoes before I even enter the house. I place them by the door as not to make a noise to alert Astoria. If she's asleep she won't know when I came home. I tip-toe my way to my bedroom and close the door behind me.

I turn to climb into bed, but its smoothed over. No Astoria shaped lump. I look around and I see her.

Astoria is sitting in the bench framed by the window. She's tracing the drips of melted snow down the window pane. Her blond hair falling down her shoulders, she hasn't curled it today, she's in her nightdress and from the way it looks all wrinkled it's because she didn't take it off during the day today. It's the same nightdress she wore to bed last night. Straight lemon coloured hair. Not the same blond as I have, or as Scorpius has.

Near as I can figure she's sitting some kind of Shiva. Without knowing what I'm reluctant to say anything.

"What took you?" her voice sounds dead, and she doesn't look at me. She remains tracing her designs on the window.

I was shopping I say reflexively.

She smiles sarcastically it doesn't reach anywhere near her eyes. She says she's not an idiot.

"No," I say "I was at the store I even bought you something if you want to see it." I'm praying she says she doesn't.

"Who do you think you're talking to? I know you were with her again. She's not even beautiful Draco, she's blessed with a resilient figure, but so am I."

I don't say anything.

"I don't know how what I told you about her didn't scare you away. I mean she's been with everyone. I'm so much better than her I've only ever been faithful to you."

I tell her I don't know what she's talking about.

"Bullshit." she says. I'm taken aback by the way she spits the word, let alone my little Astoria is using vulgar language.

I start to approach her.

"You think you know me? Well I know what kind of man you are," she shakes her head.

"I didn't do anything Astoria," I say.

She laughs, the whole time, "You think I don't know? Please, give me some credit." I'm pretending to be taken aback, "Dammit Draco I know you've been having an affair! I know you were with that woman."

"You," she says it in an accusing tone, "and Pansy Nott. How could you?"

I decide not to deny it , there's a point where it does more harm than good, "Why didn't you say anything sooner?"

"Well what was I to say? 'Oh husband, could you pick up a few things from the market and stop seeing your whore?' how well would that work Draco?"

I suppose she was right in a way. What was she supposed to say?

I kneel down next to her and try to take her hand but she rips it away.

"I would be completely justified in leaving you." she says closing her eyes and pressing her forehead to the cool glass.

I just nod.

"I love you Draco, no matter what she says she doesn't. Not the way I do. Never the way I do."

If I hadn't been so caught up in myself I might have figured out about Astoria. I might have figured out she knew all about Pansy.

I press my forehead to her shoulder, "I've stopped seeing her."

"You just saw her." she snarls leaning away from me.

"I didn't sleep with her, we only talked. It's been over a month since I last saw her." I say though I do realize that's what they all say.

She rolls her eyes as if to say 'right'.

"She's pregnant."

Astoria's head snaps up so fast she clutches her neck where she's obviously kinked it.

"What?" her eyes are round and the way she says 'what' is sort of watery and pathetic.

I backtrack telling her it's not mine. I didn't do it.

She visibly relaxes.

"I have every right to leave you Draco Malfoy." she says her voice breaking halfway through her sentence.

"You do." I agree touching her bare shoulder, she shrugs my hand away.

"I should kick you out, because no way will she have you now."

"I didn't mean it," I say pathetically.

"You never mean it, you run around and do whatever you want and I put up with it. I put up with it because...I don't know, no one knows."

"You're my 'Storia. We can pull through."

She glares at me and asks if I know how much she would like to say that we can't, that I should leave and not ever come back. She says she wants to take Scorpius and run away to another country, another Continent. But she says, she won't because she can't let me go.

I look at her as she stares absently at the window.

She really is beautiful, without all her bright colours, wearing no makeup the soft rose colour of her lips, and her blond hair. She's beautiful. She gave me a child and I re-payed her by giving her heartache.

I say I know, and that I get that it doesn't make a difference but I'm sorry.

"Yeah," her voice is soft and wispy, "you're sorry, I'm sorry, everyone's sorry."

She shakes her head, "Draco, I don't want it to be this way."

I'm contemplating reaching out to her, "Me either," I reply.

"I don't know what to do," she says. I reach out to touch her, "Don't," she says shoving my hand away.

I look her in the eye, "If you don't know what to do just tell me what to do, I'll do it."

"Now you look me in the eye, you never do that," she's on the verge of tears.

"Yes I do," I say though it's a lie.

"You never say you love me," her voice breaks.

"Yes I do, you know I do, I say it all the time," I'm begging her to believe this lie.

"No you don't," she shakes her head with a bitter smile like she's laughing at my ridiculous lie, "Do you hate me?"

"No. You know I don't. I don't want to lose all this," the natural thing feels like to grab her hand, to stroke her cheek anything.

She blinks away a few tears, "Do you still love her?"

"I don't know." I answer truthfully. It's the half truth, I still love her, I just wish I didn't.

"What about me? Do you still love me?"

I close my eyes and wait a second weighing my answer in my mind.

"I don't know." I finally answer, this answer much more like a death sentence than anything else.

She takes a sharp intake of air like I've just struck her.

"I think you should leave me alone now," her voice is nothing more than a whisper.

I pull in as close as I can without touching her, "No, I won't leave you again, not ever."

And she takes my hand and squeezes it.

"I love you Draco, and I'm stupid for it. I'm a stupid girl for loving you. But I do and that's all I have to say about that."

"I want nothing more than to love you back, I want to love you. I need time."

"Of course you do," she says bitterly dropping my hand as if just realizing she had it, "Take all the time you need in the guest bedroom, I don't care what you do I just can't bear to see you right now. Please, get out."

I go, there's not much else I can do.

I lay in the guest bedroom, right next to Scorpius' room. I look at the ceiling. I'm alone, I'm free. I'm free from Pansy, very nearly free from Astoria. Freedom. People fight for it and I wonder why, because God it hurts.

She likes blue, Astoria I mean, royal blue is her favourite shade. I understand to an extent because she does look lovely in it.

She hates quarreling, absolutely despises it. I can guess how much this is hurting her.

Her least favorite colour is orange. Bright orange to be exact, she doesn't mind burnt orange but she says she looks bad in bright orange. She doesn't look bad in anything.

Now, at risk of losing my lovely Astoria, I realize how much she does mean to me.

She once said, "The woman's natural role is to be a pillar of the family." she's been nothing less than that. A never changing piece of perfection. Until now, I've changed her and I fear not for the better.

My pillar has fallen.

The wind is whipping around outside, I think it might be a nice idea if it would pick up my house and wash it into the sea. If the wind would be so generous tonight as to do what I've always prayed it wouldn't. I know it won't but hope is a funny thing. When you have the most hope, it seems whatever it is you're hoping for never happens. I've always said all hope is, is a feeling. Before I knew how destructive feelings could be.

Astoria is sitting in our bedroom, not sleeping, probably still looking out the window. This is all because of a feeling. She feels neglected, rejected, unloved. All because I fell in love with someone else.

It must be hours before I hear anything. The sun looks like it's beginning to come up. The silver light is shining across the water and I feel that feeling where you've been up all night. Nothing feels quite real. Even if I wanted to I wouldn't be able to sleep. And I hear something.

Scorpius crying.

And then the shuffling of feet down the hall to his room. Astoria's feet. And I always thought it was the elves that took care of him. I don't know how she could ever hear him in the night. It seemed impossible.

After a while the crying subsides but I can hear something else. I press my ear to the wall, and listen.

"- not fair, I'm good. I do everything right!" It's Astoria crying.

I hear a thud and then Astoria sobbing. This is the point where worrying isn't such a bad idea.

I climb out of the bed and walk to my son's bedroom.

The scene I see isn't something I'm prepared for.

She's holding him, rocking him back and forth in her arms. She sobbing though and sitting on the floor. He's not asleep but he's twirling a bit of her hair on his finger. She looks at me and then buries her face in Scorpius' side.

"Get out," she murmurs.

I can tell she's sort of crumpled to the floor the way her legs are bent all wrong like she was trying to hold up but stopped trying.

"No," I say, not in a rude way but resolute all the same.

With more light I can see her eyes are swollen almost shut and what I can see of them are bloodshot. I wonder how long she's been crying.

"I just love you so much," she says, "it hurts, because you won't ever love me like you do her," what I had been doing to her is what Pansy had done to me.

"She's not important anymore," I wasn't lying really. The tug on my heart I feel looking at her must mean something. It was only a fraction of what I felt seeing Pansy in pain but it was something.

"That's nice of you to say," she says with a serene kind of smile. Absent, it doesn't reach her eyes.

I get down and sit next to her bringing her and Scorpius into my arms. We're sitting on the floor like a fucked up family portrait. The perfectly broken family. The worst part is knowing it's all my fault.

I've ruined everything, I've made my bed so to speak, and now I have to lay in it.

"I hate being a grownup," she says and kisses Scorpius' head.

Hearing that from her, it's strange. I've said I'm grown up before. I don't know that I ever really was though. If any of us were.

"Draco, what are you going to do?" I notice how she says "you", like her life doesn't depend on my decision anymore. Like she's tired of sitting and waiting for me to tell her what we're going to do. Maybe we're all growing up.

"Draco, I can't stay mad at you, I'd just like if you could make me happy again," she sighs, "I've had happy moments in my life, but I don't think that happiness...being happy is a perpetual state that anyone can be in. Life isn't that way. Still though further than that, there are better things than this feeling of utter hopelessness. You can make it go away I think, and if you choose not to...I have to find a way. I hate feeling like this. So Draco, tell me, what are you going to do?"

Her resolution is new. I admire her for it. Stronger than I ever could have guessed. Rather than fall my pillar has only become more resolutely standing, even if she is to be all that is left standing in my life. In the wake of destruction I still have Astoria.

"I'm going to fix this," I tell her, and I hope I mean it.

A/N: I wanted to finish with Astoria and Draco. I did that because this Chapter was mostly abut them growing up and accepting responsibility as adults. Astoria for sure had the most to grow. She was trying to assert some independence. She was tired of being pushed around. In the past she's probably always felt like Draco came before everything including herself. Now she's finally saying she's had it with the bullshit and she deserves better. That their son deserves better. When the story started she was a child, now she's grown. She's asserting herself as individual from Draco. Rather than everything depending on him she's deciding it doesn't. She would like for him to stay but if he can't she sees that it won't be the end of the world.

Pansy, I had a tough time ending it between them. She's growing up too. She's realizing the difference between right and wrong. The lines were so blurred for her before she probably knew to an extent what was wrong but she felt it was easy to ignore with a pill or a drink. She still has flaws, a girl like her can never be a martyr but she's trying. Trying to be good, for however long it would last. Oh, right and Theodore is the father just so you know. Draco probably never will though...well maybe if he ever saw the kid he might.

I'm going to miss this story!

Thank you everyone who reads this, and especially to those anonymous reviewers who I never had the chance to thank properly. Thanks for reading my work.

About addition to this story, the different POV's I only have one more to do. I have the order worked out (though its subject to change) it will go Lucius, Blaise, Astoria, Theodore, Pansy. Right now it is in order of importance. If I put it chronologically Lucius will still come first but then Pansy would be next and I want her to be last.

So? How was it? Tell me what you think! Review!