DISCLAIMER: I am not Just Kidding when I say that I am not J.K. (R.)
I've been in a terrible short-story rut lately. This is one I hope will be a credit to me and my survival of the first week of college at University of Southern California! Thanks for reading over this, excessivelyperky!
Unreachable Urania
A single heavy-lidded eye bleakly looked upon the sagging horsehair chair. The chair sat at the bureau, visible only in the dim moonlight that shone through the blown-glass windows.
Must reupholster that, Draco noted to himself, then remembered with a drowsy shiver that he was in his wife's bedchamber; he would never allow such a ratty thing to mar the splendor of a Malfoy Master Bedroom on his guard! Apparently, Astoria needed a solemn reminder about household stewardship towards the furnishings.
Inhaling and exhaling invigorated him, and he was aware that he was warm—too warm. The last day of August this year had been as hot as the first, and Draco found the heat of the day, combined with that of his wife's close presence, unbearable.
He turned to look at her, and tried to smile at the sight that met his eyes. Astoria's soft golden hair spilt across her pillows, as sweet-smelling and yellow as a sheath of lemon grass. As he made to pull back the bedclothes, she whispered something undeterminable in her sleep. Softly, Draco pondered whether his usual post-dinner ablutions could wait until morning, or if he should relieve his bladder immediately.
The need to urinate won, and he abandoned the resolve to not disturb his wife in favor of attending the loo.
When he returned, her eyes were open, and her lips pressed tightly together in concern.
"Was it . . . satisfactory tonight, beloved of mine?" she asked painfully, her desire to please him all too transparent.
Vaguely remembering what they had done, and how he had so worshipped her, he nodded and settled back in bed. He had no wish to remember; their intercourse was, as always, common, banal, and low. However, he knew from years of pondering and longing that nothing else was in store for him in the future, for a mystical, tyrannical woman of his past long ago took possession of his heart and locked it away in a cage for her exclusive use. With the devotion of the most servile of house-elves, Draco saw this, and was pleased at it.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
Never had he revealed to Astoria the existence of this other woman—who was, in his estimation, the elusive Beatrice to his Dante—and he never intentionally would. If, however, somehow she came to realize that her husband's mind lived his marriage with a woman he loved, pretended to scorn, and therefore lost, he would not care. He kept the secret from Astoria purely for her own sake; doubtless the other woman in question was married herself to that impenetrable dunce upon whom she always had doted. While Astoria would be unwise to think little of the phenomenon, she would be foolish to be angry about it, for, while Draco was so thoroughly imbued with love for the other woman, he would never act upon his emotions. He knew that the woman he marked as his true equal, his Urania, was not for him.
As a young man who had been raised in the classical traditions, Draco had learned about the two kinds of love; that of Urania, or Heavenly Aphrodite, and Pandemos, or Common Aphrodite. The latter's nectar he had partook of liberally in his lifetime: the vulgar, vile love condemned by Pausania in Plato's Symposium. ThisDraco had felt present in his first love affair with Pansy Parkinson, in his second secret sojourn with Madeline Valero (the famous Ravenclaw opera diva), and in his third currently with Astoria. Indeed, if Draco were to receive word from a seer or oracle stating that he no longer would ever meet a face of Pandemos again, he would feel blessed and fulfilled, if it meant that he could finally grasp the foreign texture of Urania, of true love.
For a few years, he had been under the impression that his inane relationship with Pansy had the mark of Urania upon it, but, in time, he realized that Pansy was far from his intellectual equal, and the primary aspect of their relationship was sex. As he felt adrift by the notion, he cast his anchor around the ocean bed of his acquaintances, trying to fish for the answer to the question If it's not Pansy, then who is she? Or he? He gave equal weight to the possibility that his true Other Half was male and not female, in perfect Socratic objectivity, despite where his personal preference lay.
Taking such into consideration, at first he thought the answer lay in his professor Severus Snape.
The Athenians were known for the acceptability of man-boy relationships, especially those between teachers and students, and their culture even lauded them as being beneficial to both the individuals and for humanity in general. Of course, having this ingrained from years of studying classical history as part of his pureblood pre-Hogwarts education, Draco was not wary as the average Muggle-Born about the option.
Snape, despite having as full a knowledge as Draco on the subject, wholeheartedly balked. His heart was torn from his own Urania long before he began teaching, and he was incapable of finding a new half to complete him. He was a broken soul, but he preferred it that way, and he had absolutely no interest in becoming Draco's lover. Pandemos would be the only one present in such a relationship, nothing higher. It was with some relief that Draco accepted his answer.
It was with some horror that, as Snape went back to muttering over papers after this discussion, Draco's eye espied a name scrunched at the top of a heinously-long sheet of parchment: Hermione Granger.
He asked Snape if he could read the paper, and the professor consented, hastily scribbling a resentful 'O' at the top and tossing into Draco's hands.
The paper was brilliant, if a trifle pedantic, covering the subject exhaustively and even going into the philosophical implications of using the potion in question and how it might be changed to reflect a different object. Draco became engrossed in it wholly, and came away from it with a vastly new perspective.
It was not much later that he realized that Granger—ugly, Mud-blood Granger was, indubitably, his Urania.
The signs were little, at first—being assigned randomly to her in two separate classes (Charms and Runes) on the same day, discovering that she had an obsession with brushing and flossing her teeth that he shared, running across her in the same section of the library a few times in the same week—but as he started to catch on, they became more flagrant. He was reminded how he read Hogwarts, a History front-to-back no less than fifty times as she sprouted quotes from it in daily conversation. When she mentioned something ironically amusing to her desperately-unappreciative friends, he reflected how he made the same joke with his similarly-affected companions not long before. Also, he kept running across her name, everywhere, in Muggle studies, in books of mythology, in books that had nothing to do with Shakespeare or the Greeks but referenced them . . . her name haunted him, as surely as her face claimed his dreams.
The clinching fixture was in History of Magic, when, all of a sudden, while discussing Henry VIII and his affair with one of his wives, Binns started to rant about Urania:
". . . among other things, it was written by the historian Royle Scrivner (on page 146, if you care to look) 'Our king is said to have many a fine lady at his bidding, but none is more significant than Duchess Marguerite Granger, the brave and stalwart widow of the late Duke Granger of Sorrel, for whom it is said that Orpheus weeps and Eros sings, she claims to be the truemost love of his majesty, beside his wife, and even compares to all as His Urania . . ."
At which, Draco started, hearing Urania and Granger in the same sentence and deeming it too serendipitous to not be true.
Alas! It was too late for him; he had cemented his reputation and expressed his opinions of her so loudly over the years that it would be fey to recant them, along with being dishonorable. Hence, as well as for the reason that his father was so imbued with the Death Eaters at that point that any point of wavering in his own behavior would endanger them all, he kept quiet—mostly.
Indeed, he left a few silent clues for her, when he could spare them. Shy to approach her, he started small: a tiny flower left poking out of her book-bag, levitated there while she was furiously sketching a series of symbols in Runes. When she bent to search frantically through her bag for a quill or parchment, as long as no one was looking, he magicked one to her desk for her to find when she surfaced, victorious or not.
Gradually, he became more bold, but no less subtle. A house-elf was dispatched every Christmas to somehow give her a present—fourth year it was an expensive set of quills with spell-checkers, penmanship adjusters, and various other effects, fifth year it was a lovely shawl of red and gold weaving with just the slightest hint of green and silver woven into it, and sixth year it was an extensive book of Greek myths. This last was the most important, he felt; he even dared to underline the description of Urania and Pandemos, and scribbled in the margin, You are my Urania, Hermione.
He knew that she received the first gift when he saw her use the quills occasionally in class. He knew that she received the second gift when, sometime in early January he saw her wear it for the first time. However, he knew that the third gift was the one that intrigued her most, and days after Christmas she carried the book around and looked carefully at everyone who dared cast eyes at her.
Unlike most people, who frowned, looked away, or appeared embarrassed at her scrutiny, when by some chance of fate she caught Draco's eye, he stared back at her, the coldness lost from his eyes for the briefest of moments.
She opened her mouth, like she suspected it was a joke, but his genuinely hurt expression in response kept her from shouting aloud. So, instead, she remained demure, and went back to her breakfast.
Later, he found a note on his desk in History of Magic.
Malfoy—dare I address you as Draco?
I can't help but feel you're setting me up for humiliation, but my intuition tells me you're not. I don't know what to make of you, really I don't.
You say that you think that I'm your Urania. If that's the case, may I respectfully ask, what leads you to this conclusion? Also, why on earth--if you think this--do you act so incorrigible? Why, up until now, have you expressed nothing but disdain towards me?
Hermione Granger
He sighed, realizing the difficulty of his situation, and he replied.
Granger—please, may I call you Hermione?
I'm not setting you up for humiliation. I implore you, believe me.
I came to the conclusion that I was in love with you in fourth year, though you have no reason to believe me, of course. I can't explain it. There were a hundred thousand little things that brought me to the idea, and at first I loathed the thought that you and I might be romantically compatible in a way that most would not be. Now, I don't.
The more I pulled away, the more I fell. The more I tried to express how much I hated you, the more I found I could not resist your charms. You're far from beautiful in form and figure, but you have a beautiful mind and nature. I am sincere when I say that.
I ought to have done this before, in person, when I could have safely done so—but now even this paper might endanger my life and that of my family. You are a Muggle-Born. I must hate you, at least outwardly, on pain of death. But I also cannot, for fate is too strong a force.
I don't want to sound soppy like Trelawney or anything, but we are destined for one another, or at least, I am destined to be in love with you. I can't explain it any more clearly. I doubt you return the affections—how could you! I've only been the most insufferable bastard you ever knew, I suppose—but do know that I wish to avoid hurting you, that I live to see you in class every day, and that I would die if you died.
I must reiterate, lest you have any doubts—I'm not setting you up, pulling you on, nothing like that. Nor am I writing this for some sort of sick joke, though, knowing how I've always treated you, there's no reason for you to believe me.
So, believe me or not, as you choose, but know that if there's anything I can do for you—NOT for Potter or Weasley, whom I think company unworthy of you—that I can do from the shadows, do let me know.
If you doubt my veracity, which is still very likely, I ask you to re-examine your Christmas gifts from the previous two years and try to remember any others that had no note as to its giver. Remember the shawl and the quill set? Those were from me.
This note will turn to dust in a few moments.
Affectionately, D.M.
He watched as it crumbled in her hands, and caught her eye as she glanced back at him, still worried probably that it was some terrible joke. His shoulder moved to shrug.
All she did was nod, and she turned back to listen to Binns.
Some days later, he took note that a sterilizing basin appeared on his desk after he dropped his knife in Potions, and he cast her a half-smile of recognition.
All she did was stare at him, then went back to her own work.
In the library, when he was searching for books for a Runes essay, Hermione wordlessly passed him those that she had already picked out as she finished them; they were inevitably the ones with the most pertinent information for their research, of course. He thanked her with more courtesy than he had ever given er, ever, and she actually smiled in gracious acceptance.
They rarely talked, they never touched, and they would not have even considered going to Madame Puddifoot's together, but these little interactions kept Draco's heart from completely going cold as he entered the ranks of the Dark Lord and prepared for his greatest and most terrible sin.
Finally, after the Battle of Hogwarts, he got a moment to talk to her.
"You turned," she said in her matter-of-fact way, and he nodded.
"Much sooner than you expect I did," he replied, a tired but superior smile gracing his lips. "I had to wait until I knew before I-"
"-I know," she interrupted. "I just want to let you know—I'm glad you're alive. I figure you're not feeling too wonderful at the moment."
So saying, she embraced him in a deep hug, one more intense than he expected. He felt himself melting in her arms, and he realized that it was not just tricks, he felt incredibly at peace and in-tune with her.
She sighed, evidentially feeling the same.
"I have to go now," she said, finally dismissing him from her grasp reluctantly. "I . . . you know it wouldn't work, us together," she added, apology in her eyes. "I've got Ron, you see. I'm so sorry."
She seemed to quail as he bent his head, feeling the inevitable rejection he had been awaiting as it crashed against him like an enormous sound wave.
"I wish we had a chance," he whispered, his eyes lowering as he tried to hide the impending rain.
"I do, too. Maybe, if things don't work out with Ron . . ." Hermione sighed. "But I know they will, too well. I always thought he'd be the one I ended up with eventually, but I didn't know I had other possibilities. I'm really homely, and I know that, and I've always felt a bit like he was as good I was going to get under the circumstances."
The idea that she thought him better than Weasley was a comfort, and he managed to raise his eyes again to meet hers.
"You aren't too bad. Not like Bulstrode, at any rate," he replied, not sure what else to say. He had so much he wanted to express, but he found himself sorely lost for words.
"Thanks," she said, knowing that such was high praise from him.
With a sudden rush, she kissed him on the cheek, and with that she was gone, leaving him to touch his face and kiss the moisture of her mouth off his fingertips.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
Much later, an embittered Draco talked about the situation with the portrait of Snape, who knew of Draco's plight all too well. Loving a woman whom he as forbidden to love was a particular specialty of the late Potions Master, and he was enlightening on the subject. As Draco revealed the aftermath between him and Hermione, Snape encouraged his student to drop the chase, accept a draw with fate, and search instead for happiness of a lesser, more common kind, at least for the moment. It was not worth it, Snape said, to hound after something that one could never have. The portrait also reported that, should Snape have survived the war, he would have pursued a lesser happiness and been content with it, rather than searching for what could never be found a second time.
Draco had heeded this advice, married Astoria both out of duty to this pledge and with some fondness for her besides, but all too quickly he realized that his dissatisfaction overwhelmed the benefits of living modestly and passionlessly. He felt the driving need for a more true, a more divine, more whole sort of love than what he got with Astoria, and every night as he sang Eros' praises to Astoria, he felt sick with the banality and commonality of his love.
This led him to often pretending that he had indeed found Urania, and basked in sinful pleasure between Astoria's thighs while imagining they belonged to someone else. Every time, however, the deception ended before he was fully satiated, and he was rendered all the more discomfited for his trouble. Like Eurydice felt her bitterness at having to remain in the underworld surge as she came so close to returning to life, so did Draco feel angry and displeased at his lack of ability to discover Urania in Astoria. He only found Pandermos in Astoria.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
The particular evening when Astoria begged of him Was it satisfactory tonight, beloved of mine?, despite the fact that he replied in the affirmative, he felt that it was like all the other times they had made love.
Sensing that her husband was still unhappy, though she could not fathom why, Astoria pleaded forgiveness in the guise of touch.
"Please," she asked, wrapping her trembling arms around him, "do try and find comfort in me. I'm here, with you! Am I not enough?"
He sighed. "You are." This was a painful lie for him, as much as he wished to believe it, but it was necessary to ward Astoria from needless injury.
Without comprehending the reason for his misery, which was particularly acute that night, Astoria suggested, "Perhaps seeing Scorpius to the station tomorrow will bring you cheer, my love."
He nodded, hoping perhaps that she was right.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
King's cross was unchanged, and Draco felt the pressure of his son's goodbye embrace only numbly. Too many memories encapsulated his mind, preventing his reactions to the real world from being anything but automatic.
Then he saw her. Urania, the woman of his visions, surrounded by a crowd of happy people young and ld alike. Shame stole into his heart, and he looked down at his own son, who was anxious for a token of approval before embarking on the freshest brightest chapter of his little life.
Inspired by Urania, who leaned down and kissed her little girl in blissful ignorance of his observation, Draco emulated her and laid his cold lips on his son's brow.
"Do well, and serve the Malfoy heritage proud," he bid his son, and Astoria followed her husband's lead and laid her gentle mouth on Scorpius' cheek.
"Now, be off with you," whispered Astoria, the smile of jubilant maternal love on her face as her son bowed and stalked regally towards the carriages of the Hogwarts Express.
"Merlin forbid he be a Gryffindor," Astoria said, kindly attempting to read her husband's thoughts and agree with them.
Watching the subject of his affections bid her girl that you needn't worry what house you get in, because, no matter what, we love you, Draco shrugged. "It would not be reprehensible if he did, I think."
So saying, he felt Hermione's eyes suddenly meet his, and he shivered.
Urania was calling but, as he saw Astoria gently taking his hand, he dared not approach. Anyway, like the doe of Snape's affections, she would probably scamper away into the underbrush. He resisted the temptation, forsaking the little chance that she might be willing to stop and let him nuzzle her ears, if only he might gaze from afar. His Urania might be unreachable, but he still had dreams and the substitute of Pandermos, ready and willing to give him what consolation he might derive from her.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .