"I'll take my leave as well," Professor Snape said shortly. The hem of his robes flared as he turned on his heel and strode out of the hospital wing after Oleandra, the black folds of his clothes sweeping about his legs. "Kindly send word if the girl wakes up, Pomfrey."
"Very well," Madam Pomfrey replied curtly. She then turned to Astoria, her expression softening somewhat. "I'll leave you to watch over your sister… oh, I'm not going far; I'll just be dipping into my office for an hour or so," she explained. "There's a remedy I've just thought of that might be of help, but if you can wake her on your own before then, so much the better."
Madam Pomfrey hurried back to her office at the rear of the Hospital Wing and closed the door behind her, leaving Astoria alone in the ward with her sister. The red-headed girl pulled up a stool and sat at Daphne's bedside, then drew her wand and gave it a little wave.
"Let's see if I can get it right, this time…" she muttered to herself. "Diffindo!"
Astoria pointed her wand at the bright green apple sitting on Daphne's bedside table and promptly split the fruit in half… along with its plate, leaving a deep gash in the lacquered surface. The flower vase beside it, filled with winter daphnes, wobbled from the spell's force, spilling a little water.
"Oh, bother," Astoria grumbled to herself. "Reparo."
The two halves of the plate sprang back together, and the wood chips flew back into place.
Using magic precisely was quite a delicate affair, and Astoria had never been very good at half-measures. Her scythe weasel bloodline was quite effective when it came to cutting stuff into pieces or slicing flesh to ribbons, so each time she used the Severing Charm, she ended up going too far.
After a few more tries, Astoria finally managed to produce several bite-sized apple slices, albeit very uneven ones. Setting her wand aside on the tabletop, she picked up one of the pieces with her fingers and tried feeding it to her catatonic sister.
"Here, say aah~," Astoria said, prodding Daphne's lips with the piece of fruit. "Come on, open up~ it's not as if it's poisoned, or anything like that…"
Daphne's lips refused to part.
"Honestly, Oleandra could have stayed a little longer," Astoria sighed. "It feels rather awkward, with just the two of us, after everything that's happened…"
In truth, Astoria now regretted giving Daphne the cold shoulder during their time together at Malfoy Manor. Were it her, she would never have yielded to You-Know-Who as her sister had, but perhaps that was because her values differed from her sisters'. Her lifelong, once-incurable illness had skewed her sense of the value of her own life, and only after she was cured had she gradually begun to separate idealism from reality.
Astoria had never expected to live past her early twenties, which ought to have driven her to cherish what little time she had… yet the constant, dull ache caused by her malady had left her with a distorted sense of what it meant to be alive. Most of her early days, those when she wasn't wracked by wordless agony, were spent reading in bed, amongst the books in the Greengrass family library and the letters her sisters sent recounting their exploits at Hogwarts.
To Astoria, upholding goodness, like her heroes— Oleandra, Daphne, Harry and the characters from her stories— was the epitome of what a true Witch should strive to achieve. But to Daphne, protecting her fragile family, torn apart by two Wizarding Wars, mattered most of all… and if she had to give up her soul to the Dark Lord to safeguard her loved ones, then so be it.
Oleandra was similar to Daphne in this, but the family she considered hers encompassed far more than just the Greengrass household. Viviane had sacrificed herself for her, and so she took the burden of restoring Avalon and saving Faeriekind as her own, and hers alone.
"You gave me my life back," Astoria said quietly. "It was just like a fairytale… I thought we would fight together for ever and win our happy ending… I was sure that was our destiny… so when you betrayed Professor Dumbledore… betrayed us…"
Tears dripped down from her face as she began sobbing softly.
"I felt lost, you know?" Astoria sniffed. "I didn't know what to do, I'm not like you or Oleandra… I couldn't understand, but I think I do now… you were just protecting us, weren't you?"
Daphne slowly turned her head to look at her, but Astoria did not notice. She was staring at her feet, tears falling freely onto her knees. It was only when Daphne reached for the wand Astoria had left on the tabletop that she finally looked up, bleary-eyed.
Astoria's beastlike reflexes kicked in as Daphne's fingers closed around the wand, her lips already forming sounds.
Time seemed to slow down to a crawl.
"Avada…"
Eyes widening in shock, Astoria's hands shot out and grabbed Daphne's wrist, wrestling for control of her wand, but an invisible force rippled from her sister's body, sending her sprawling. She crashed into the wooden stool she had pulled up to the bed, toppling the bedside table and dragging it with her to the ground as she fell, and becoming tangled in the curtain dividers separating the hospital beds.
"Keda…"
Without thinking, Astoria plunged her hand into the cracked flower vase that had fallen beside her, ignoring the sharp pain as the broken glass sliced open her palm. She reached through the water, her fingers closing around the Sword of the Lake's hilt.
"…vra!"
Astoria swung the sword in an arc, slicing through the curtain dividers and intercepting the jet of green light streaming out of her own wand in her sister's hand. There was a brilliant flash of emerald as the deathly energy rebounded, burning a hole in the ceiling.
"What is wrong with you, Daphne!?" Astoria screamed. "You almost killed me!"
Daphne took a deep breath.
"Help, I'm being assassinated!" she called out. "My own sister is trying to kill me!"
A chill ran down Astoria's spine. Those sinister, vertical-slit red eyes… those weren't her sister's eyes.
"Who… who are you?" Astoria said, her voice quavering as she unwittingly took half a step back. "You're not Daphne."
Daphne smiled thinly as Madam Pomfrey came crashing through her office's door, wand drawn. Without hesitation, Astoria spun on her heel and threw her sword at one of the Hospital Wing's great stained-glass windows, shattering it.
"Hey, you!" Madam Pomfrey shouted. "What do you think you're doing!?"
Astoria took a running jump and braced herself, crashing through the window. A feeling of weightlessness washed over her as she fell, controlling the wind currents to slow her fall… and she hit the roof of the bridge connecting the South Wing to the Bell Tower running, before taking a plunge into the dark waters of the Black Lake below, vanishing amongst the ripples.
"What in the world?" Madam Pomfrey gasped, running to the window and peering down below. "She's… gone."
The blessing of the Lady of the Lake protected Astoria. No water would ever impede her.