◤ ❝You love her. So much so that you would allow yourself to be destroyed just to give her a life unriddled by the effects of this darkness you have weighing on your shoulders. It is a love that will get you killed. She will be your downfall; no constellation seen in her eyes can carry you away from that truth.❞ ―Narcissa Malfoy ◢

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CHAPTER EIGHT:     ERIS

January 28th, 1980

           Alastiare Erebus was nothing short of trouble, but his mischief was hidden behind his dark eyes and brightly lit smile. Celicia Radnor had been compelled by those very features since they were in their first-year. Now, look at them. Sitting in a dark room with Alastiare's eyes but a shadow underneath the red rims of exhaustion. Celicia couldn't remember the last time she had seen a smile on her fiancèe's face. He had turned weary, cold to the touch. That was when she first realized that the dark times were truly upon them. The love of her life chose to rest his loyalties elsewhere, and she had no way out. Celicia had long-since found comfort in something else. As Alastiare prepared for the Wizarding War, she prepared for a war of her own. Her swollen fingers rested gently on her growing stomach. Her only joy in the darkest of times was the small movement of the little baby rolling about in her stomach—Andromeda, if it was a girl, and Theseus, if it was a boy.

However, not even the small kicks of baby Mia (she was certain it was a girl) could distract her from what was happening in the house of recently-wedded Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy. They, too, had a child on the way. The gathering was meant to be in celebration of their recent marriage, but everyone there knew that was just a facade. It was a meeting for the Dark Lord, and the hanging left arms of men and women alike showed that. He had stained them. Marked them forever. The unsettling feeling returned in her heart when she watched Alastiare snap at Rookwood, wondering what will become of the man that once a heart fit for a saint. What kind of father would he be to his little girl?

Celicia could not watch any longer, and instead went looking in the crowd of former classmates and sullen wives for one woman in particular. If only her sister had come, she would have latched onto Athella and held onto her sister for dear life. Instead, she looked to find Narcissa in the manor while her husband moved along to converse with the Lestrange's, not wanting her unborn child anywhere near the insanity of Bellatrix. It was only when she saw a blonde in the corner of the room, staring out the window a distance away from her husband and holding her stomach gently, that Celicia breathed out a sigh of relief. 

Her swollen feet carried her to the window where Narcissa stood, and even in the midst of all the chaos, Celicia smiled gently when she saw the bump that was also forming on her friend. Her child was not due until June, but Celicia did not have much longer. Sometime in late February, but she wished she could just keep her little girl in the protection of her womb until the danger was over. It seemed much easier that way. 

"Cece," Narcissa muttered, barely a whisper as she kept the attention off them. 

She didn't need to say anything more, though. Celicia had already outstretched one of her hands, gripping tightly onto the woman like they would die without one another. She knew everything that Narcissa wanted to speak about—it was everything that terrified her, as well. The worries over their lives, their husbands, but most importantly, their children. It was becoming dangerous to even step outside with the acceleration of the Dark Lord's plans, and should anyone discover their husbands' involvements, both families would feel the weight of the target on their backs.

"I know." 

The blonde turned her withering eyes to her closest friend. "I will not watch my son grow up in this world, Celicia... if I have to rip the world apart for him, I will do just that. I can barely imagine Lucius being a part of this war, but not my child. Things are changing too quickly, and I fear for the future that Draco will have if Lucius remains in this fight."

"You've decided that it's a boy?" Celicia asked, trying to find the light in her words as she smiled. Even as tears started to form in her eyes, she glanced out the window at the night sky. The moon was at its fullest. "Draco is a beautiful name. Born from a constellation. He and Andromeda will have stars in their eyes—I know they will. They will live up to every bit of their name. I believe our children will be better than us...bright, and beautiful, and brave enough to make their mark in this world. They must. Promise me, Cissy, that we will hide this life from them." 

Their hands intertwined, a silent exchange of peace that they would do everything in their power to keep the two children resting comfortable near their mothers' hearts safe. Narcissa Malfoy and Celicia Radnor had no idea that they would fail the promise they made to one another, or that fifteen years from that moment, their children will have lost every single star from the constellations that took their name. Bright, and beautiful, and scribbling in every page in the world with their pain. Draco and Andromeda—two beautiful constellations meant to burn up like the stars they rested under.

――――――――――

October 5, 1996

Andromeda's eyes darkened considerably when she walked into Snape's classroom to see that the reasoning behind her detention was already there. Potter had his head turned away from her, but upon hearing the slamming of the door, he snapped up and looked back in her direction. His reaction was no less disgusted than hers. Rather than giving him any attention, she walked down the aisles and raised her brows at Snape. He was sitting there, absentmindedly grading their homework from yesterday about dark wizards and their use of the Dark Arts. Naturally, he payed no attention to the shadow looming over the parchment. 

"Miss Erebus, if you would care to step out of the light before I mistake your work for dreadful," Snape deadpanned. When there was no movement, he let out an elongated sigh and looked up. "Yes, Andromeda?" 

Mia stuck her neck out like he was delusional. "You can't honestly expect for me to sit in this classroom with him for an hour."

"I can, and you will," Snape said. "You both seemed adamant on speaking to one another during my class. Here is your opportunity."

Andromeda glowered but said nothing, going to sit at a desk that was as far away from Potter as humanly possible. Snape scoffed from his desk, flipping through a paper. "Please tell Goyle that Grindelwald was not the father of the Dark Lord, Miss Erebus."

Mia rolled her eyes at Goyle's stupidity. The assignment that he was grading was, surprisingly, one of her best works all year. It was easy to write about dark wizards and the Dark Arts as she rested with the Dark Mark on her arm and an armory of spells pertaining to the Dark Arts in the back of her mind. Much like her Slytherin companions, she talked mostly of Grindelwald and the Dark Lord, comparing their missions and how they approached using the Dark Arts to get what they wanted. Snape wanted an unbiased, untarnished version of events from everyone—she could only assume that Harry Potter and his band of imbeciles were lacking on that part.

"Now, I have to go speak with Dumbledore. I trust that the two of you will refrain from killing one another..." 

With that, Snape had left and Andromeda was alone in a room with Harry Potter. Mia was baffled now, her mouth hanging open as she watched her professor leave. There was absolutely no way he would leave two students that just tried to murder one another alone if he hadn't been hoping that it would happen. The boy was staring at the wall behind her head, gripping tightly onto the desk like he truly was refraining from killing her. As if he had the reason to be upset. She scoffed, wanting to laugh at the irony of the situation as she watched the boy. 

"If you plan on killing me, Potter, have the pride to look me in the eyes when you do it. I believe it makes death sting a bit more."

Potter glowered as he turned to look at her, still restraining himself. "That something they teach you when you become a Death Eater?"

Mia didn't even flinch, scoffing out loud at Potter's accusation. "Does it make you feel better to believe in that lie? Does it make you rationalize a hatred for me instead of guilt over what your godfather did to my father? Because I can assure you that if I were a Death Eater, you would be dead sooner than you would even know...but I'm not a murderer, Potter. I'm vengeful."

Potter narrowed his eyes at her, but her words did shift his confidence. It made him wonder if he had done just what she said—projected his guilt over what happened in the Department of Mysteries as something worse to make himself feel better. He didn't think on it long, knowing that this could very well be his only chance to talk to the witch without any hovering figures behind her. 

"You hate me for something I didn't even do," Harry stated, dumbfounded.

Mia raised her brows. "And do you hate me for anything more? I've done nothing to warrant your spite from the moment I met you. You sit there and put your godfather on a pedestal that is much too high for him to reach, especially now in death, while I put my father on the short mantle he deserves...and I allow his memory to sit there because I know he wasn't a Saint, but he was not deserving of death either. You blather on and on about his person, yet you know nothing of the man. That is why I hate you, Potter. You believe you are entitled to say things that should stay behind your tongue... I'm sure you didn't even know that he and Sirius had been friends once, did you?"

"What?" Harry asked, shaking his head in disbelief. "That's impossible."

"Ask McGonagall then," she said without pause. "Would your saintly Sirius befriend someone so coldhearted and evil, Potter?"

"I don't believe you." 

Mia grinned maliciously at Potter, shifting a bit closer to him. "Oh, I'm a lot of things, but a liar is not one of them."

The irony of a liar telling a lie was not lost, but she didn't mind one bit as she watched Potter try to process the information she just spilled out to him. She wondered how disgruntling he must feel to find out that his hero was playing around with the villain in his eyes. In fact, all she wanted to do was continue to rub in the truth because she could see how much strife it was causing him. She didn't, though. All she could do was narrow her eyes on the boy in front of her and wonder how their lives had become so intertwined.

"I never spoke ill of the Boy Who Lived—even when I met him on the first day of school and realized that he was nothing more than a boy who didn't die by a chance of fate," Andromeda said, looking away from Harry to stare at the brick wall behind his head. Her voice was flat, and those brown eyes vacant from anything but a twitch of detachment in her mind. "I suppose it was because I had hope that he would turn out to be a Slytherin—that, possibly, this boy so loved that his parents would die for him, would not be so different from me after all. Even if I hadn't believed that my own parents would make the same sacrifice...but, then, he muttered those two words. Not Slytherin, and I knew that day that I would always be looking up at a boy, wishing that I had been given his life because he had something I would chase for the next six years. Hope."

Potter looked at her in surprise at her revelation, his mouth opening and closing in an attempt to figure out what he could possibly say to her after that. He didn't come to detention expecting for them to speak. He expected much less actually. They made it their missions to ignore one another every corner they took, so the approaching conversation did nothing but throw him off track. 

"What happened to you, Andromeda?" Harry asked, his voice no louder than a whisper. "You were the one that made us all wonder if we were wrong about your house–if it wasn't Slytherin that was bad, but only those chosen to be in it. Something like your father."

A bitter laugh escaped Mia's lips, and the brunette was shaking her head in amusement. "Like my father...you want to know what happened to me? You saw a moment of my father. Just because that moment was the time he chose to bleed compassion on his own grave does not mean that he is to be looked upon as a role model either. He was my father, and I loved him, but he was still a Death Eater. He still followed the Dark Lord, still believed that mudbloods like Granger were lesser than he was. He led that example of hatred, and I followed without question. I've told you once before that Slytherin does not condemn a person's character. Slytherin isn't bad, Potter, but the world."

"But if your father was friends with Sirius," Potter began, referring back to what he had just learned. "If what you said is true, your father made more than one choice in his life. He chose to be friends with a Gryffindor. He made the decision to still speak to Sirius after he was disowned by his family—the Black family. Do you really see it as such a coincidence that you were named Andromeda? After a Black—your father named you after someone pure at heart."

"Pure. The only thing pure about me is my blood, Potter." Mia scoffed, venom pouring through her teeth as she sat up straighter. "For fifteen years, I waited to feel better. I waited with this ache in my chest, cutting into me, burning me, and I got tired of waiting. I got tired of waking up every day, wondering when my father was going to tell me that he loved me. I got tired of asking my mom to help me with my homework. Our lives were not the same, Potter. It was not the ones who created you that never showed you love. It was just unkind muggles. Your parents died for you. Countless others have died for you...but you know who would die for me? No one. I've been alone from the moment I was born. The only coincidence in this moment is that I'm sitting in front of the boy I despise and wanting nothing more than to laugh in his face because at least I respect myself enough not to pretend."

Mia's face went blank for a moment, having just realized how much she revealed to Potter when she should have just kept her mouth shut. Oddly enough, she didn't care. If Malfoy ever found out that she had spoken word of her feelings to the enemy, he would. Nothing she said revealed anything about her mission with him. Only the truth of her father, and the truth of the life she lived for sixteen years. If anything, part of her hoped that Potter would stop pitying himself when others had a life just as tragic as him. 

"Tell Snape I had to go. Enjoy detention, Potter. I'm sure you'll be in here a lot more." 

Mia left the Defense class as quickly as she possibly could, trying to ignore the pounding of her heart. Potter's suspicion could have taken her down an entirely different conversation just then. As she turned on her way to the Slytherin common room, she rubbed absentmindedly at her left arm without thinking too deeply on it being the same place where her Dark Mark rested. Before she got any further than a few steps, she was running into the side of a person and flinching back at the contact. 

She went to say something bitterly when she recognized who it was that she ran into. Andrew Vaisey was grinning brightly down at her, his brows raised in expectation at what she was going to let slip out of her sharp tongue. "Ah, look who it is... had I not known you better, I'd believe you planned these little run-ins, Andromeda. Taken a fancy to my company, have you?"

"The other way around seems more likely, Andrew," Mia said, her own brows raised in retaliation. Her hand dropped from her arm, the thought of it left in the back of her mind as she focused her attention on the boy in front of her.

"I do try to talk to you any moment I can," he cheekily grinned. He looked over her head in wonder before turning back to her. "Who have you escaped from today?"

"Detention with Snape," she paused, her lips twisting into a scowl. "And Potter."

Vaisey's stood taller at that. "You're all right?" 

"Would it matter what the answer was?" 

"It would to me." 

Mia sighed, shifting weight on her feet as she looked at him. "Potter just has a mouth that never knows when to keep shut. Nothing I can't handle myself." 

"I don't doubt that for a second. Doesn't mean you have to put up with his arrogance," Vaisey argued. His face twisted in thought. "You can fight your own battles, Mia...but if you ever need someone to stand by your side as you win them, you'll always find me in your corner. I may not be your first option, but know that I am one." 

She met eyes with Andrew at that, surprised to have received that support from him. The Quidditch player had always been a friend to her, never quite close until this year, but it was still a bit surprising to know that he would be willing to stand for her should she need it. His gaze was genuine, kind, and Mia could feel her heart getting stuck in her throat as she refused to give up the eye contact between them. Before she could stop it, though, the familiar tug of the nerve in her brain appeared, and Mia was being sucked into the bottomless surface of Vaisey's mind without wanting to. 

"All right, Vaisey. What have you got planned for Erebus?"  

Urquhart was standing in the Quidditch pitch alongside Vaisey, the two of them watching as the others on the team preformed their warm-up drills before practice. Crabbe and Goyle were chasing one another around with their beaters, paying no mind to anything else happening. Draco was a few feet away from them, but neither boy noticed the way that his neck tilted at the sound of a familiar last name. 

"What have I got 'planned' for her?" Vaisey repeated, his lip curling up a bit at the derogatory connotation that Urquhart was insinuating. "I fancy the girl, Urquhart. Have for a while now. Nothing more to it. I'm just trying to get to know her better."  

Urquhart scoffed, twisting his broom in his hand. "That girl has been mental ever since her father passed...don't know why you've become so keen on getting close with the daughter of a criminal anyways, mate. Besides, wasn't she shagging Malfoy all summer?"

They instinctively looked Malfoy's way, noticing how the blonde-haired Seeker was gripping onto the edgings of his broomstick like he wanted to snap it in two. Assuming it was the play that their teammate just horribly enacted, neither one of them thought much of it. He had been acting odd ever since they returned from summer vacation anyway. His behaviors were commonly accepted now.

"Lay off, Urquhart," Vaisey said, his expression turning cold as he looked at the boy. "She just lost her father. You know nothing about her." 

"Oh, and you do?"  

It was an accidental glimpse, but clearly Vaisey had been thinking on the memory for it to be the first thing she latched onto with her legilimency. Something that she could see became more uncontrollable when her emotions were all over the place. Just as it happened in the Great Hall with the first-year, it happened too similarly with Andrew just then—not being able to control it was beginning to worry her, as she had no trouble with it over summer.

"Andromeda?" he asked, grabbing her arm gently to shake her out of her trance. 

Mia took a step away from his grasp, her mind still in a daze as she focused on anything but his eyes. "I'm sorry. It's been a while since I slept. Thank you, truly... I'm going back to get some rest, but I'm sure I'll be running into you soon." 

"I hope so. I'll see you again, Andromeda. Sleep well."

He headed towards the Great Hall for dinner while she went in the opposite direction through the viaduct. Just to ruin her day a bit more, Pansy Parkinson was the only one in their dormitory when Mia went to catch up on sleep before dinner. Unfortunately, that particular girl was also crying her eyes out on her pillow. When she turned to see who had entered the room, her eyes rolled and she let out a groan. "Get out, Andromeda. Go have another one of your secret meet-ups with Draco." 

"All right, Parkinson. I don't think you understand that Draco is the furthest thing from whatever you think he is to me," Mia said, her annoyance bottoming out as she looked at the girl. "All of these remarks you are making have you sounding like a mental girlfriend. It's not attractive."

Pansy's eyes welled up with tears even more, and she let out a sob. "I'm not his girlfriend anymore. He broke up with me! Can you believe that? Me!"

Oh, bloody hell. She didn't know she was walking into this. Anyone else in the world was more qualified to comfort the girl than she was. Tracey would even be better than her. With her current state of exhaustion and no amount of empathy left in her body, all Mia wanted to do was walk away from the girl and spell her so her sobs were silent. In the back of her mind, she glowered at Draco for breaking up with the girl right now. He couldn't have done it after dinner? Or four years ago?

"All I asked was for him to tell me he loved me back, and he goes absolutely insane and breaks up with me!"

Mia looked at Pansy with confusion when she heard why they broke up, her head slowly shaking as her eyebrows fell lower. She didn't make eye contact, not wanting what happened with Vaisey to happen again. Merlin forbid, Pansy's thoughts wouldn't tell her any more than she could see on her face. She didn't want to see a single one of the thoughts roaming around in the girl's mind. It wasn't an emotion out of spite that Mia felt, but simply shock that the girl truly had no idea who the boy that she claimed she cared for so deeply was. If anything, she felt pity that the Slytherin girl had let her heart become so wrapped in a mess as unnecessary as love.

"You really don't understand him, do you?" she asked, leaning forward as she asked the question. Pansy's shoulders tensed, back arching in defiance but kept quiet. "You boast about your relationship with him like it's something we should all envy. Like we should all be throwing ourselves on our knees to beg for even the slightest of what you and Draco have, but you don't even see him. You don't see anything but his physical appearance and what he could give you if there was actually any love between the two of you. You see his words, his actions, but you don't understand them. He is never going to love you the way that you expect him to because he isn't capable of that kind of commitment, Pansy. Giving yourself away to someone that can never return it is going to hurt you more than it will even be enough for him to notice."

Pansy stared at her, and Mia watched as her expressions molded into a variety of emotions. First, there was anger that she was even speaking so openly about her relationship with Draco. Then, there was a spark of jealousy that Mia misinterpreted as enmity because her few words held more knowledge of Draco than Pansy had ever known. Finally, understanding. Pansy realized why Andromeda was telling her the truth, and as much as she wanted to spit in her face with blatant denial, it would be no use. Even she could not convince herself that the observation was false.

"I could change," Pansy tried, but she knew the moment that it escaped her lips, it was a lie.

Andromeda knew she was reaching a boundary that she promised herself never to cross since her father's death. "Not enough for him to see it. You control yourself on your emotions—superiority, ambition, love. He's set himself to belief. No matter what he feels, that is higher than all other. If it matters at all to you, his struggle is going to be finding someone who sees the world the same way. Him breaking your heart might be the best thing that ever happened to you. Go find someone else that appreciates every bit of your clinginess."

"I don't think it will be as hard as you think."

Draco and Andromeda may despise the idea of loving another person, and their mouths turn up in disgust at the mere thought of being with each other as the rumors called for, but they didn't know the truth. Their fates had been sealed with one another on that fateful night when Celicia Radnor and Narcissa Malfoy declared their children to be constellations. Connected, and ever-so-fatefully destined to crash and burn at the other's side. Loving one another was inevitable. It was only a matter of the cost that came with it once it happened.

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Author's Note:

(Unedited) This is a filler chapter! But I love it! It was just to reveal that Draco and Mia have pretty much always been destined to be at each other's side.  Obviously, they aren't going to fall in love (or at least KNOW they're in love) until further along into the story. Hi, I'm a slow-burn kind of woman, and Mia still has other relationships to develop before getting it anything with Draco.

What did you think about her interaction with Harry? Justified or unjustified?

ERIS: GOD OF STRIFE AND DISCORD