A/N Hello hello, all. Thank you to returning readers, and hello to anyone new! As always, credit must be given where credit is due: the characterization of Daphne Greengrass is entirely from user Relic of Elegance, a good friend and an incredible writer. We've RPed the sisters, and she was kind enough to allow me to incorporate Daphne into this fic. Daphne is her baby.

Thank you again for the reviews left on my first chapter; I'm really overjoyed that anyone read it and liked it enough to want to leave me such kind words.

"How plead you?"

The court room was silent, painfully so. Astoria glanced down at her hands, clenched in her lap; blood pooled in her palm from where her fingernails had broken the skin in neat little crescents. Because of her age, the press hadn't been allowed to sit in on the trial. It was proving to be one of the best-kept secrets of the new age. From the seats surrounding the floor, she saw her mother, sitting in the back, and Veronique offered her daughter a small, proud smile.

Daphne was nowhere to be seen. Briefly, Astoria wondered what would have hurt more, not seeing her sister at all, or seeing her sister there to enjoy the show. Father was home, probably wrapped in a cocoon of blankets and curled in front of a fire despite the summer heat.

The willowy young Auror who had arrested her was sitting up front, his honey-colored eyes on hers. The silence stretched, her stomach turning and her fists clenching in her lap again. There was something odd about this one, something about his eyes… Astoria looked back at the Minister, clearing her throat.

"I don't."

She was the very image of innocence. The skull etched into her arm, a serpent slithering from its open jaws, must have been shocking to see. She resisted the urge to stroke the outline of the Mark, the way she had the past year any time she was anxious.

The Minister sputtered in surprise, any words he'd been planning to say dissolved in his shock. "You—you refuse to plead?"

"Yes. I refuse."

"You cannot refuse, Miss Greengrass."

"Respectfully, Minister, I can and I do." Her voice was surprisingly clear. The tremor would only be audible to those who knew her voice well. The Minister wasn't as terrifying as he thought he was; then again, after dining at the Dark Lord's table, very little was as terrifying as it once was.

From the stands, Veronique pressed her lips together to keep her smile contained. Astoria caught the gesture from the corner of her eye and lifted her chin, continuing. "There is no plea I could enter which would be entirely true, Minister. I apologize for my seeming insubordinate, but I cannot, in good conscience, plead 'not guilty' when the charges leveled against me are truth; nor can I accept limitless guilt. There are circumstances which beg recognition."

Ah, they were surprised; good. Astoria sat back, waiting patiently for a response, as the Minister stared at the parchment before him, his face growing steadily redder. "I'm not sure I understand," he said finally, his words slow, and Astoria nodded.

"Sir, throughout history, whenever a regime has fallen to another, stronger regime, the strong-willed have two choices. Either they can become martyrs, or they can become survivors." Almost desperately, Astoria wished that Blaise had been allowed into the court room. She could have done with knowing his eyes were on her. "The martyrs inspire short-lived, bloody rebellions that very rarely end in any prolonged change. The survivors learn the mechanics of the new system so that when the time comes to topple it, every cog in the machine is destroyed."

"You were a survivor, then?"

"In every sense, sir, yes. I am a survivor."

"One could argue that you are an opportunist and a traitor, Miss Greengrass. You used the Cruciatus Curse against your own classmates."

"I used the Cruciatus Curse with a wand at my back," Astoria clarified.

"Were you afraid of dying, Miss Greengrass?"

"No." The Minister looked surprised, and she continued. "No, I wasn't afraid of dying at all. I craved it. I was afraid of living. The difference between me and the others you've brought into this court room is that I did it anyway."

The Minister rose from his seat, looking both impressed and infuriated. "Take Miss Greengrass back to Azkaban, please, while the Wizengamot considers her plea or lack thereof. Court shall resume tomorrow morning at the same time." He waved his hands, adding, "You are dismissed," before turning his back on the court room.

It was all a power play.

It wasn't until the Auror took her by the arm, one of his colleagues taking her by the other, that Astoria realized what had been so odd about him: His eyes had stayed on her face the whole time.

Not her arm.

The thing she missed most about freedom was dreaming.

She rarely slept anymore. Then again, she hadn't slept much before her arrest. Instead, she waited—waited for dawn, waited for someone to walk by, waited for her bones to calm. Sometimes it seemed she would wait forever.

The cell was small, its walls and floor filthy and stained with piss and blood and all manner of sin. She could pace the perimeter a dozen times a minute. When she finally did collapse, too exhausted to keep walking back and forth across the concrete floor, it was on a thin mattress with yellowed and torn sheets. Despite the oppressive summer heat that poured in from the barred rectangle barely as wide as her hand, she shivered as she closed her eyes and drifted in and out of a sleep plagued with screaming.

It wasn't dreams that made her scream; reality did a good enough job of that.

The Auror from before seemed to have been assigned her keeper. He came to collect her the next morning with a colleague, a petite, thin woman with dainty features and dark eyes. Her dreadlocks fell past her waist, and her teeth, when she smiled, were bright. She seemed pleased that Astoria was awake when they arrived, sitting on her bed and waiting, her eyes fixed on the door.

"My name is Lorelei," the woman said, and Astoria smiled in spite of herself.

"I'm Astoria."

"Can you come with us, please, Astoria? We need to bring you back to the Ministry today."

The Auror watched them curiously as Astoria stood and moved to Lorelei's side. The two didn't speak after that, but Astoria had an ally.

"It says here that you were a member of the student revolutionary group called Dumbledore's Army." The Minister didn't phrase it as a question, but there was clearly an answer expected; Astoria cleared her throat and nodded. "I need you to speak out loud, Miss Greengrass."

"Yes, I was."

The Minister looked at her, puzzled. "Why?"

"Minister, I'm afraid you'll find that my motivation rarely changes. Survival."

"You joined when you were thirteen. Your primary concern, at thirteen, was survival?"

Astoria paused, considering this. "No." She exhaled slowly, turning her words over in her mind before speaking again. "When I first joined Dumbledore's Army, it was because I thought it was the right thing to do." Her lips curled up in a wry smile. "I had delusions of grandeur and heroism, I'm afraid. I thought that a child's interference would somehow stop the evil I was seeing."

"You thought He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named evil, then?"

Raising her eyebrows, Astoria chuckled. "Minister, the evil I'm referencing was of the Ministry." When he frowned in confusion, she clarified: "I didn't join Dumbledore's Army to fight off the Dark Lord. I did it to bring an end to Dolores Umbridge."

It was the string of hospital visits by students with words carved into their hands that made Astoria decide to join.

She sat in the back of the Hog's Head quietly, listening to Hermione Granger speak. At her side, Harry Potter kept his eyes cast down and his fists clenched. She could see the scars across the back of his hand and felt a pang of sympathy.

It had never occurred to her that Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived, the hero of the generation, might be a quiet sort of boy. It had never occurred to her that he'd be just a boy. She'd expected someone sure of himself, confident, entirely adult. Her interaction with him the year before had been limited enough for this idea to grow and continue, and as she watched him stand there in silence she wondered how many wars had been raging inside of him, how many scars he bore that they couldn't see.

She signed her name at the bottom in small letters, thrilled by the rush of adrenaline that meant, she supposed, that she was doing something important.

Meetings were the highlight of the year. She hated Umbridge; she hated Defense Against the Dark Arts (how were they meant to learn if they couldn't practice?); she hated Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle even more than ever, and she was starting to hate Pansy. She spent most of her time with Blaise and Millicent, sometimes joined by Theodore, walking through the halls and doing homework and talking. It was becoming clearer and clearer to her that when they graduated, she'd likely have no friends left, but she didn't mind. She had another two years with them.

More often than not she'd meet Blaise in secret to teach him what she'd learned at the Dumbledore's Army meetings. Whenever she did he spent at least five minutes lecturing her, but it was worth all the lectures in the world to see the proud gleam in his eye when she'd do something impressive.

When she cast her first Patronus, a wispy little trail of silvery smoke that fell rather pathetically from her wand, Harry Potter clapped her on the shoulder and gave her a rare smile that reached his bright green eyes. The next thing Astoria knew her wand was on the floor and she was hugging him around the neck, beaming.

"Thank you," she whispered before letting him go and stooping down to pick up her wand and try again.

"You cast a Patronus at thirteen?"

Astoria couldn't help but laugh softly at the Minister's shocked expression. "Not a corporeal one, unfortunately. I wasn't able to cast a corporeal Patronus until my fourth year. But I had the beginnings of one, yes."

Sneaking a look at his secretary, the Minister cleared his throat and leaned forward. "Your name appears on the roster that was confiscated by Madam Umbridge, but you weren't present at the meeting she broke up. Why was that?"

Setting her jaw shamefully, Astoria coughed. "I was warned."

Pale fingers closed around her wrist as she walked down the hall between classes, and Draco Malfoy pulled on her arm just enough to slow her down so he could walk behind her, his lips close to her ear.

"Stay in your room tonight, Greengrass. It's not safe out."

"What are you talking about?" She started to turn to look at him, but he shook his head, releasing her wrist and instead gripping her shoulder. He spoke quickly, almost recklessly; there was none of his usual arrogance or conceit in his voice now.

"It's not going to be safe to be out tonight. Just stay in your room." Almost before he'd finished speaking, he was gone, and it wasn't until another student rammed into her that she started walking again, her cheeks flushed and her head down. What had he meant?

But she stayed in that night, missing her first and only DA meeting, and when word spread that Dumbledore had fled the school, she realized just how far Draco had gone to protect her.

They hadn't exchanged more than a "hello" and "excuse me" in years. Why had he suddenly started caring about her wellbeing now? She surveyed the Great Hall silently, waiting until it started to empty; when Draco stood, so did she, making a sharp, unexpected left just in time to crash into him. They both knelt to gather her things, and she pushed her fingertips up against his briefly. "I stayed in."

"I saw," he said carefully, collecting a quill that had fallen from her bag and holding it out for her. She took it, brushing her fingers against his in silent thanks.

"Why did you warn me?" she asked, shoving the rest of her things into her bag haphazardly.

He shrugged. "Blaise asked me. Did you tell anyone…?"

"No. Only Blaise."

Nodding, Draco stood. He walked away as she finished gathering her books, not looking back as he left the Great Hall.

"Was that the beginning of your relationship with Draco Malfoy?"

"I don't think you could quite call it a relationship, but yes, that was the real beginning." Astoria chewed the inside of her cheek uncomfortably. She didn't like talking about him. She didn't want him dragged into this any more than he already was.

The Minister nodded. "What would you call it, then?"

Pausing, Astoria ran her tongue along her teeth. "I suppose I'd call it an understanding," she answered finally. "We were not friends. We were never friends. Neither of us like the other enough to pursue any kind of friendship. And we were never involved romantically or sexually. At the same time, with what we've both been through, and what we've been through together, I don't think you can call us 'acquaintances'."

At this, the Wizengamot turned to one another to discuss this in hushed tones for a moment. She took advantage of the respite to glance around; Lorelei was sitting in the front, watching her, and nodded when their eyes met. Veronique was sitting where she'd been the day before. It astonished her, sometimes, how much like her mother she looked—square jaw, sharp cheekbones, dark curls, and the same wicked eyes. She could hear the clicking of her mother's fingernails, long and painted, tapping against the bottom of her chair, and she relaxed just a bit, comforted by the familiar sounds.

After a few more moments, the Minister turned back to Astoria. "Tell us about his return."