Chapter Text
There's a blurry memory that haunts her till today, months spent between the cold research labs and the assigned hospital room.
The impatient footsteps, the squealing steel wheels on her bed and the familiar scent of magical disinfectant. She remembers 26 lightbulbs in her hallway, 19 steps to her floor, and the calming shade of light blue. There was a self-serve hot cocoa machine at the end. She burnt her hands once after greedily overfilling her cup with wiggling marshmallows.
3 knocks on her door meant Mediwizards, and 2 meant the healer. Her sister never bothered to knock and she still doesn't.
Prodded, isolated, injected, tested, and finally diagnosed:
"Blood Malediction"
With the two words uttered from the Healers mouth, a stifling silence engulfed the room. Astoria doesn't remember much. But she remembers enough to find it confusing.
Her father's stern face pulled into an impassive mask. Daphne- only 6- fiddling on his lap, ignorant to the heavy verdict announced to her sister. Her mother held her that night, the three of them (with Daphne) squeezed together on her hospital bed.
She reminded Astoria again and again,
"You are pureblooded. No matter what people might say to you, you are and always will be part of the best."
"Don't let anyone make you forget that."
Astoria didn't understand back then why her mother was so intent on drilling it into her head. She was from a prestigious family, one of the sacred 28, Pureblooded. She knew that she belonged to the best. Why would she ever forget that?
But that night, along with her intent to please her parents, a seed of doubt was planted. It would lie dormant for a good several years, digging its roots deeply into the crevices of her mind. Only after that would it sprout and outgrow the garden of her ancestors.