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Asteria knew how much stress her father was under since making his few and far meetings with the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black. Nerves riddled him left, right and centre every time she'd glimpsed him through the agape door of his study. It was odd. Gordon Murphy was not a man of many emotions. In actuality, the only emotion she'd really seen on him was anger, but not at her directly.
Gordon wasn't ideal father material. Asteria had realised that when she was just five years old and her older half-sister had mistakenly let the family dog into his office after playing in the mucky fields with the horses. Muddy footprints and paw prints marred almost every surface, including precious documents from their father's work at the Ministry. But Gordon hadn't chastised her as a father should have. No, instead Asteria watched her mother scream at him in fury for whatever it was he had said and did to leave Leto balling her eyes out, tears and snot running down her reddened face. Her sister never liked being around him after that and she'd never told Asteria what words had caused such an intense dislike for their father.
The second time she realised Gordon wasn't a good father was when she'd found out he used the Killing Curse on their dog a year after the office incident. Apparently, a wild fox had bitten him and gave him rabies, leaving only one option: to put him down. But try telling that to a six year old girl who just wants a cuddle from her fluffy dog. She'd realised in her later years that it had been a mercy for the dog, however, her father didn't have to go about it the way he did. He didn't have to use an Unforgivable Curse in front of his six year old daughter. He didn't have to "play God" and ruin everything as she'd overheard her mother say from time to time.
Her mother never liked Leto or Asteria near him too often. Phaedra didn't like the idea of him poisoning their minds without whatever plagued his own and she had been a Malfoy before she became a Murphy, so anything she didn't like, was easy to diminish. She cared for Leto as if she was her own, protecting her from her father who loathed the very sight of her. Apparently she reminded him all too much of his first wife. That's why she always got a rougher hand than Asteria.
Asteria was his golden girl, picture perfect and obedient. She had yet to face the cruel end of her father's rage and she had no intentions of facing it any time soon. Perhaps, that's why when he announced she'd be marrying Sirius Black, a renown and extremely intimidating deatheater, she didn't voice any objection. She might have feared marrying an almost stranger with a cruel reputation but she feared her father more.
Leto and Phaedra weren't all too happy with the news either. As the eldest daughter, Leto should have been married off well before Asteria. She was upset that their father didn't see her as good enough to preposition her to the Black family as a potential wife. Phaedra was enraged he'd made the deal without even consulting her first; instead he waited until he'd sealed the deal to inform her. She was also pissed that he'd basically shamed Leto for all the other families to see: no one would want to accept her into their family. It rose too many questions why she wasn't good enough for the Black's. If she wasn't good enough for them, why would she be good enough for another wizarding family? It was an insult to them to offer them a lesser option than the other offered to the Black's.
