This is written for awesome Schermionie who requested a Astoria/Draco/Gabrielle love triangle with the prompt "French philosophers". Here is it, not really what was requested but I hope you'll like it anyway Schermionie :)
Thank you Ela, for beta-reading this.
Astoria finds the book in one of her boxes; she probably has taken it by mistake while emptying her books from the Malfoy library. She doesn't remember all the books she bought during those twenty-five years of marriage, but this one is definitively not one of hers. It's written in French: Les Philosophes Français. Draco probably bought it when he was with the other in Paris. She has always liked France, but now, she hates it.
She flips into the book, cursing that she can actually comprehend French. She hates the bloody language now. "The language of love, my ass," she mutters. More like the language of bloody part-veelas stealer of husband. Without meaning to, she reads one of the quotes inside.
"Il n'y a que du désir et du social, et rien d'autre" — Gilles Deleuze
There is only desire and social, and nothing else.
"'There is only desire and social, and nothing else,'" Astoria reads out loud. If she had heard that particular quote twenty-five years ago, she would have laughed at it.
What happened between her and Draco at the time was much more than desire, or lust, much more than a social arrangement for the two families. It has been love and understanding, compassion and complicity. She laughs bitterly.
That Deleuze guy is right, there is only desire and social, two very ethereal things. Lust lasted only at the beginning of their relation, when they were young and naive. The social ended precisely when Lucius and her father shook hands to deal the engagement. After it, it had only been love and happiness. Or so she had thought. But now, both are gone missing, and indeed there is nothing else remaining.
She turns the page of the book, like she turned the page on her wedding, the day she had witnessed him with the other woman.
"Dis-moi si, dans quelque contrée que ce soit, il y a un père qui, sans la honte qui le retient, n'aimât mieux perdre son enfant, un mari qui n'aimât mieux perdre sa femme, que sa fortune et l'aisance de toute sa vie" — Denis Diderot
Tell me if, in any country, there is a father who, without the shame holding him, would prefer lose his child; if there is a husband who would love better lose his wife, than his fortune and the ease of his life.
Again, she laughs. She knows a man who has willingly lost fortune and the ease of his life. Does it make him a better person than the man who trade wife for money? Does it make him more courageous to abandon the ease?
Because she doesn't think so. She was married to that man that abandoned everything. He's a man who had preferred to lose the trust his son gave to him and the love his wife shared with him to run away with a younger, more beautiful woman. He gave up his fortune to Astoria, like an "excuse-me" gift. And it'll be impossible for him to live in England any more because of the conflicts with his family and hers, but he left the same. Ironically, Draco Malfoy did something that could be entitled courageous. He gave up fortune for love. Astoria doesn't laugh any more. She cries.
And she closes the book with rage, like he closed the history of their life together.
«Quand on est heureux, on n'a plus rien à espérer». —André Comte-Sponville
When you are happy, you have nothing more to hope for.
The quote on the cover is taunting her. Is the contrary true, too? Because she has nothing more to hope for, but does that mean she's happy? Because honestly, if this is feeling happy, she doesn't really like the feeling. She has tried not to cry, she has tried to push him from her mind and forget about his very own existent, but she just can't. He has been twenty-five years of her life, which is more than the half of it.
She cries at the mistake she did the day she let him kiss her, she curses the moment his touch bewitched her. Because she doesn't like to admit it, but she misses it. She misses it as strong as she would have preferred never knowing him in the first place.
She sobs even more.
Astoria feels strong arms embracing her and a sweet voice shushing her. She tenses because the memory of Draco still lingers in her mind, but when he says, "It's okay Mum," she relaxes and cries even more. How can she regret meeting Draco Malfoy, when the bastard offered her her more precious gift?