1. Smoke and Mirrors
Draco has never seen mountains such as these before.
The only other mountains he's ever seen are in Wales, and those are cloaked in greenery (like Slytherin snakes, he thinks somewhere between lonely and bitter). It is easy to imagine that they are not as tall as they really are; their height slips into the green-grey sky like an evening dusk shading into night.
But here, in Southern California- part of the United States- the sun blazes away the tattered remnants of the clouds by nine in the morning, and the mountains rise high against a backdrop of a blue so bright it hurts to look. The mountains themselves are stark, a stark brown against the blue perfection, and they have little greenery to them. They are as bare and naked as the mountains in Wales are cloaked, and Draco feels like this is a sign.
(A sign that his life need not be so deceitful, but can rather be open.)
2. Good, and Evil
He is here because he can no longer tolerate the sidelong glances and hisses that accompany his exit from a manor (that is more nightmare than haven). His father is in prison, and his mother is safe in her own world. Draco has little left but the name Malfoy and his pride, and even that is dwindling away. So, he is here, with nothing but the dust on his feet and the clothes on his back.
He goes to work in a local branch in one of his family's many companies, and slowly learns the basics of accounting and assisting from the ground up as his father never knew. His colleagues all think him a sheltered young man- how else to explain that he doesn't know how to use the stove?- who is reserved and a little arrogant (they do not know that in another world, he is a villain with a scar on his arm that brands his family and sullies his name).
Draco suffers quietly, like a martyr- he refuses alcohol and works hard enough that his nights aren't plagued with shadowed, threadbare dreams but are numbed and quiet.
He knows that hope is only for heroes, and what he is…
Whatever else it is, it isn't a hero.
3. Never Quite the Same
He meets a woman in the firm, a woman who is sharp and witty and pretty. She rarely smiles, one man whispers when he notices Draco's fixation, and Draco nearly snarls at him. But then she tilts something almost like one at him, and he's hard-pressed to stop from blushing brilliant pink (not red. Red is for foolish heroes willing to lay down their lives for causes they've never heard of).
Life glitters in her eyes, where all he's seen is hatred and loneliness for so long; he can't resist talking to her, and he walks her home that night.
They don't talk about much, only the cases she has and he hasn't gotten to yet.
"Some days I feel like I'm the coffee boy," he confesses in a rush of courage. Immediately, he feels like an idiot, but she doesn't scoff.
"I know," she tells him quietly. "There are people who don't understand pain- or hard work." She smiles softly, and her lips- red, kissable- remind him of innocent thoughts on a Christmas morning when he was only fourteen. "There always are." Her eyes deepen, pain lighting something inside them.
Draco nods slowly.
(But somewhere deep inside, he wonders what this pretty Muggle girl can know of loss, and heartbreak. She doesn't- cannot- understand his nightmares where he holds his wand over strangers' heads and curses them under his father's tutelage and his mother's sadness.)
He doesn't kiss her, though some part of him wants to; she's not lesser than him, to be used and discarded like paper money, (like he's done to Parkinson and countless others, when he was prince and they were only commoners) and he will treat her as best he can.
Instead, he places a hand on her shoulder, and pretends it can become a kiss under the moon.
4. Only Children Weep
She kisses him on Christmas Day, and her red lipstick slicks over their mouths like a promise unwound.
Mistletoe hangs over their heads; lights blur into a shine of golden-edged dreams. Draco is in love for the first time in his short (long) life, and he can only think about the unfulfilled lives he's lived to this day.
"My name is Lily," she whispers against his lips, and all of a sudden his dreams fall apart, into an April shower of loss.
(That name belongs to Gryffindor mothers willing to lay down their lives, to shining angels in gold and scarlet, to heroes and martyrs Draco can never, ever hope to become.)
He can't help but think that he's corrupting her, now- she's proven to be as innocent as he'd once hoped she'd be ignorant. Her laughter grates within hours, and the gleam of side-long perfection fades into broken, scattered nightmares.
He leaves the next morning, and doesn't look back.
5. Where the Darkness Lies
Astoria Greengrass is a porcelain doll, and he cannot understand her.
She shines brilliant diamond against a velvet backdrop (he can almost believe that she's a Black star, and he wonders if he'll continue the tradition of marrying their cousins) but Draco is, perhaps, the only person who can see the hairline fractures in her china-clay perfection. He offers her a slow smile instead of a bow; Draco shows her teeth and enamel-lacquered steel in that breath, and Astoria is caught under his will like an inexorable prey in a predator's grasp.
Her blond hair hangs to her waist, the next morning. Draco presses a kiss against her thin wrist (how can they not see the wasting sickness underneath the impeccable manners?) but doesn't smile triumphantly.
Astoria isn't a trophy to be won, even if he did fight for her as if she was.
He finds her in a small pub in Norfolk, later that month, drops of rain hanging in her hair like so many jewels, but the grief darkens her eyes more than any bijous can hope for.
All of them, every last one, is shattered by the war, and Slytherin has been hurt the most. Gryffindors are brash; they break rather than bend- that's why, despite all the trauma they've gone through since their first year, most of them aren't devastated. Slytherins are more sensitive, and seeing the reality of their parents' dreams has ruined more of them than any other can understand.
Astoria is just another nameless casualty in a long line; she bears her scars not on her pale, unmarked skin but in her bosky brilliant eyes.
(Draco mouths a kiss, matching each sad gleam; he will turn her despair to love with his hands and lips alone. He might not be an alchemist, but he has found that gold and forever isn't meant as much as the fairytales make it out to be.)
6. Nothing Spectacular
He asks her to marry him on May second, five years to the day of Voldemort's defeat.
Astoria looks at the small ring in his hand. It marks so much- promises of forever, hopes of togetherness, and something even more; something deeper. It whispers of love, and Astoria nods wordlessly. Her eyes gleam jewel-sharp, and the customary reserve fractures into brilliant emotion.
Sun shines over Draco's hair, painting it white-gold, like an angel's halo. Astoria reaches up and cups her hand above it, watching as it darkens in the shadows. It seems more natural, somehow, when he isn't lit up but thrown in darkness.
(Astoria doesn't know when she fell in love with this selfish man, but he has stolen her heart from the ballroom they'd first met in.
She will splinter her own soul before she tells him, though.)
"Yes," Astoria whispers quietly. As if to mark it, thunder crashes in the background and lightning slices the sky open.
Rain drenches them to the bone as Draco slides the diamond ring onto her finger.
7. Winds of Heaven
Nobody knows when they marry.
It is Draco, and Astoria, and Harry Potter- who will officiate the marriage- alone at the bower. It isn't the grand wedding Astoria's always dreamed of, or the wedding Draco wanted for his wife. The Malfoy name is sullied, now; it is branded along with the blackened snake on his arm.
Potter had been blackmailed; Draco had fought for one but Astoria's bitter father had placed an embargo against all vicars. Furious, Draco had turned to one person who, while hating him, had always been fair.
(Draco saved Hermione Granger from his aunt's sickening sadism with a quiet spell, weak because it was silent, but saving her nonetheless. A Confunding charm, that brought her up short for a brief moment.
She recovered by the time Potter and Weasley arrived, and he wasn't foolish enough to step in then.
But they both saw the murderous insanity in Bellatrix's eyes, and Granger knows she owes him a life debt even as she escapes.)
Love is for fools, Draco doesn't quite whisper into Astoria's hair.
Then she looks up at him, and he imagines her response: Then let us be fools together.
He whispers his vows into the jasmine-edged bower, and winds his arms around his wife's aurelian hair.
("We loved with a love that was more than love," a man once wrote in the margins of a story, and Draco tells himself that if he proclaims his love for his wife, it is too cliché. He will never forgive himself if she doesn't respond, after all.)
Potter apparates away, duty done, and Draco curls a smile around his wife's wrist.
I love you, he doesn't quite say.
8. Healing Souls
Scorpius is born on June sixth, exactly a day after Draco's birthday.
Actually, he's born at 11:57, on June fifth. Draco, in a fit of selfish pique, changes the date to June sixth- he doesn't want his own day overshadowed by the little, squalling thing his wife has borne for nine months.
All that, of course, is before he actually sees the little boy.
Scorpius has Astoria's chin, and the small, contented smile that can be mistaken for a smirk is all his. He has fine ashen hair, flushed pink skin, and eyes bluer than beryl stone.
Draco falls in love for the second time in his life, but this time it is without any grandstanding or maneuvering. He falls in love simply, completely, (and he thinks this is what 'head-over-heels' means.) and fiercely. This little boy will have everything in the world he wants, because he deserves everything.
"How-" he asks Astoria weakly, unable to form the words.
She is sweaty and unattractive, dressed in sharp green robes that clash with her eyes, but some part of him- the one that wants to survive till morning- doesn't comment on it. She seems to understand, though, his unasked question, and finishes it quietly.
"How did two people like us make something as perfect as him?" Astoria smiles softly, and Draco melts into Scorpius' mother's eyes.
"I love you."
The words slip out, oil on water. Astoria's green eyes tilt, widening, and then she smiles, like a rising star, or a dancing moon.
"I love you, too."
Closing his eyes, Draco wraps one arm around Astoria, with the other cradling Scorpius.
Opening them, he sees a family he could not only kill for- as he'd done for his father- but one he could live for.
("One word Frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.")
And Draco loves for the first time, endlessly... infinitely.
Enjoy this one! A Draco/Astoria fic; not my usual fare. Hope all of you like it.
Reviews inspire me.
-Dialux