Harry Potter: Who Is Draco Malfoy's Wife Astoria & Why Is She So Important?
There are, to put it lightly, a ton of characters in "Harry Potter." Some might argue there are far too many, and beyond that, they've got a whole mess of fanciful, difficult-to-remember names, like "Blaise Zabini" and "Berthilda Bagshot" and "Rupert Slumberbutts." (One of those is made up.) The point is, there are probably a few characters that aren't on your radar like Harry Potter himself, or Albus Dumbledore, or Hagrid, or any other fan favorites... and one of them is probably Astoria Greengrass.
Mentioned briefly in both the books and the films, Astoria Greengrass is incredibly important for one reason: her husband. No, really; she marries Draco Malfoy, one of the series' main antagonists (albeit one of the least effective antagonists, when you really think about it), and the two of them have a child, Scorpius Malfoy. Astoria ultimately dies of a magical disease known as a "blood curse," but in the aftermath of the original "Harry Potter" series and throughout the narrative of its stage play, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," her legacy as it pertains to both Draco and Scorpius is extremely vital. Here's everything you need to know about Astoria Greengrass, why she matters, and how the character's actor was involved in a real-life on-set romance.
Astoria Greengrass also attended Hogwarts, but wasn't a part of the main story
Astoria does attend Hogwarts along with the rest of the crew, though she is two years beneath both her future husband Draco and her older sister, Daphne Greengrass. In "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," we learn that an ancestor placed a blood curse before her birth, which weakened her throughout her life. After leaving Hogwarts in the aftermath of the battle that pitted Voldemort, the Dark Lord, against his nemesis Harry Potter, the two married — though author Joanne Rowling notes in her online encyclopedia, Wizarding World, that Draco's parents weren't happy.
"Draco married the younger sister of a fellow Slytherin. Astoria Greengrass, who had gone through a similar (though less violent and frightening) conversion from pure-blood ideals to a more tolerant life view, was felt by Narcissa and Lucius to be something of a disappointment as a daughter-in-law," Rowling wrote. "They had had high hopes of a girl whose family featured on the 'Sacred Twenty-Eight', but as Astoria refused to raise their grandson Scorpius in the belief that Muggles were scum, family gatherings were often fraught with tension."
So why Astoria? As Rowling said during a 2007 PotterCast interview, it was really because she hated Draco's Slytherin classmate Pansy Parkinson — so she wanted him to marry somebody else instead. Enter Astoria.
Scorpius and Draco's story continues in Cursed Child — without Astoria
Thanks to Astoria's illness, rumors abound that she and Draco had to use shady measures to have a child — and poor Scorpius is even rumored to be the son of Voldemort himself when he arrives at Hogwarts. Thankfully, he has a friend in Albus Potter, son of Harry and Ginny Weasley, who ends up shirking his family's tradition by being sorted into Slytherin rather than Gryffindor.
Astoria's death happens during the first few years of Albus and Scorpius' time at Hogwarts, and it leaves him adrift — adrift enough to concoct a genuinely unacceptable plan where they use one of the Wizarding World's remaining Time-Turners to try and undo the death of Cedric Diggory, a classmate of both Harry and Draco's who was murdered in cold blood by Lord Voldemort. This forces Harry and Draco to team up and try to prevent their sons from permanently and irreversibly altering the trajectory of the entire magical world, and though Astoria isn't there to see her husband work with his former enemy, it feels like she'd probably be proud he was able to set his prejudices aside.
Tom Felton and Jade Olivia Gordon — who played Astoria — dated in real life
Here's a little piece of trivia for you — Felton, who played Draco for the entire film series, briefly even dated Jade Olivia Gordon, who played Astoria Greengrass briefly in the epilogue of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2." Gordon isn't an actress, but a stunt assistant — but she ended up involved with the "Harry Potter" films as an extra at first.
In 2011, Felton explained how that all came to be to The Daily Mail, saying, "We met on the set five years ago. It was love at first sight in the Hogwarts Great Hall — for me at least. Jade had been asked to be an extra for the day. The Slytherin table were doing our naughty thing, looking around for good-looking girls, and she caught my eye. The weird thing is, I didn't really see her or speak to her for about two years after that, then we ran into each other on set again, and three cups of tea later, here we are."
The pair ultimately split up in 2016, but still, it's pretty fascinating that Gordon and Felton's on-screen marriage turned into an off-set romance. You can stream the "Harry Potter" movies on Max now and spot Gordon's brief appearance as Astoria Greengrass.