#vi. interaction

  eyes meeting his are not known to lie for the sake of simple feelings. her lips do not lie, either, though the words they part to speak are quiet. “yes,” she says. “you did. and so did i, and so did nearly everyone we know.” has she not said the same things to herself on those nights when guilt prods her stomach, keeping her awake? it was a war / we were children / it was a war / we were children. like counting sheep, that steady rhythm of her own thoughts, meant to be lulling. some nights it had seen her through night to early morning. “you would fuck up” (how her mother would hate this language, despite how strangely it sits upon astoria’s tongue!) “even more if you let that dictate the terms of the rest of your life.” 

  “as i am not normally in the practice of drinking two cups of tea at once, and unless there is someone else in this room more fond of tea than you are, i suppose it must be.” dry as the words are spoken, she speaks with the smallest of smiles. there are two teacups, complete with saucers, spoons, a little bowl of sugar and a little pot of cream, all floating along before her, gently nudging into one another now and then with ting!s of contact. “what with exams approaching and all of the students in such a mood, i thought perhaps you might need one.” 

           too little too late, perhaps, but she smiles now. a smile like a secret, soft and hidden, yet a smile still. “no,” she says, “i suppose you might not have.” no apology, no avoidance. it is a fact, it had not been a mistake, her smiles had not been counted like precious things and yet she had kept them close. “when i was a little girl, i watched my mother smile ta things she didn’t want to smile for. she used it to excuse a slight, to make a point, but seldom just because she meant it. i made a promise to myself that i would only smile if i really, truly meant to smile.” dramatics of childhood, of her teenage years! it makes her smile now, more broad and warm, self-deprecating hints in the way it turns at the corners. “i might have been a little too strict about it during school.” (and then, of course, there had been less and less to smile about, less and less to mean the smile for.) “yet...old habits, you see. they are very hard to rid oneself of.” 

         what is there in her that anyone could wish to be? of the greengrass children she is least interesting, less beautiful, content to move in the shadowed places left by daphne’s brightness. “whyever would you want a thing like that?” no sharp words, only quiet ones, quiet as the pale hands pouring tea from an age-old silver pot. one for him first and then for hereslf, the motions full of ease of practice, lessons that started soon as she could hold a cup aloft. in pale light silver spoons and sugar tongs gleam, hit the thin porcelain of teacups to make them glow, translucent. her parents’ parlor is formal, all white and grey and heavy wood, and she has never liked it - - - she herself feels formal here, and this question is not the sort to need a formal answer. her eyes in the light are more green than their usual, the hazel settled. she had not liked him much at school, thought him and his friends too loud, too brash, too mean. but the draco the war has left behind is new, is different, and she thinks almost impossibly of the photographs she’s seen of phoenixes, heads shaking off the ash of former selves. “do try to keep this from daphne, but i think i rather like the person you are becoming now. i...” a pause, her teacup half-raised to her lips, as though she has in the balance the words she wants to say and the consequences of them. “i do not know that i always think so well of myself. and i would not like to dislike you.” again

loneliness  has  been  a  truth  she  does  not  wish  to  face. to  have  it  placed  before  her,  clear  as  day,  raises  up  hackles.  makes  her  want  to  hiss  and  spit  like  a  cat  with  ruffled  fur,  she  does  not  want  this.  she  does  not  want  to  think  about  it. her  hands  tighten  briefly  on  the  book  she  had  been  holding, rearranging  the  shelves  in  her  office  by  order  of  time  period  rather  than  author,  but  when  she  slides  the  book  home  it  is  done quietly,  composed.  her  fingers  loosen,  and  she  does  not  hiss.  she  barely  even  blinks.  nor  does  she  look  back,  chooses  instead  to  turn  to  the  next  book  held  in  the  crook  of  her  arm,  hazel  eyes  scanning  the  titles  on  spines  before  her. “no,”  she  says,  the  low  melody  of  her  voice  just  loud  enough  to  be  heard. “alone,  perhaps.  but  they  aren’t  the  same.”  she  had  been  lonely  before,  there  had  been  times  during  hogwarts  where  she  had  been  so  lonely  she  wished  to  swim  away  through  the  windows,  through  the  lake,  and  away,  but....now?  now  she  does  not  know  what  she  is,  not  truly. “loneliness  is  all  in  the  mind, neville.”  she  does  turn,  now,  just  her  her  head,  peering  over  her  shoulder  with  the  smallest  of  smiles. “one  can  always think themselves  out  of  it.” 

life  has  been  a  classroom  of  actions  and  reactions,  what  to  say  to  words  volleyed  to  her no  matter  what  the  time,  no  matter  what  the  place. she  has  learned  to  respond  to  compliments  and  insults  a  like,  bold  as  well  as  under-hand,  and  yet  this  leaves  her  blinking.  (what  is  she  meant  to  say  to  that?  what  is  anybody  meant  to  say  to  that?) she  hadn’t  even  realized  she  was  blushing. slender  hand  lifts,  back  pressed  to  blushing  cheek,  feeling  the  warmth  of  and  against  her  own  skin. “i  haven’t  much  of  a choice in  it,  i’m  afraid,”  she  says,  wry  little  smile  only  just  hitting  her  eyes,  she  doesn’t  like  having  such  things  called  out,  but  then...who  does? “nor  was  i  very  much  aware  that  christians  and  virgins  were  the  only  ones  with blood and  vessels  for  it.” 

what  can  he  possibly  have  to  feel  guilty  for?  thoughts  rush  like  cold,  clear  water,  cascade  over  her  until  she  cannot  possibly  bear  it  one  moment  longer.  guilty  /  not  guilty,  what  is  she?  what  has  she  ever  been?  and  why  can  she  not  bring  herself  to  feel  it  more  deeply?  (because  the  truth  is  that  she  knows  she  should  feel  worse  and  yet  cannot  seem  to,  cannot  make  herself  feel  so  terribly  guilty  for  simply  having  survived,  for  being  sixteen  and  enveloped  in  a  war  she  did  not  choose.  (the  carrows  had  not  forced  her  to  cruelty  the  way  they  had  others,  nor  had  she  joined  them  of  her  own  free  will  as  some  had,  she  had  simply  been  there,  she  had  simply  tucked  herself  away,  she  had  built  up  walls  like  those  of  the  castle  around  her  and  had  kept  herself  behind  them.) “guilty?”  she  says  now, “you?”  it  is  not  sharply  said,  it  is  not  cruel,  not  even  unkind,  but  layers  of  disbelief  do  not  wipe  away  easily. “and  yet  it  seems  the  wizarding  world  is  lauding  you  a  hero.” 

life had not taken her where she had always expected it would - - - she had never thought she’d end up here again, under the roof of hogwarts, teaching. had never expected that the interest she had taken in history so long ago, all those old books and older stories, those dates, those names, those timelines, all would add up to this. they put her in a classroom neither in a dungeon nor in a tower but somewhere near the center of the castle, a view of the lake shimmering through the windows, and somehow it felt right. she has been trying, all this time, to be different and yet remain somehow, at her core, herself. she has been trying to be better, which is why she’s heading for the greenhouses now, and the other professor who had been at hogwartrs the same time she had, just a year ahead. “neville longbottom?” she calls, peering through the stems and leaves of plants as she walks in. “are you in here?” her hands are folded carefully in front of her, she moves through the waving leaves as though afraid to touch them. when she finds him in the middle of all of it, she offers a smile that’s.....not shy, no, but hesitant. “you were a year ahead of me while we were both here, but we never truly met. i thought, since we are both teaching now, i should properly introduce myself. i’m astoria greengrass - - i’m here to teach magical history.”