AN: For Morgaine2005: Thank you so much! Enjoy!

Chapter Seven

…in which there is no I or you

so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
-Sonnet XVII from 100 love sonnets, Pablo Neruda

He sat alone, in the dark with his thoughts for Merlin knew how long. A dangerous thing, he knew, but the dark seemed to offer a kind of comfort that the light would not yield for him. He was waiting- for something. For her, perhaps, or for absolution.

"Draco!"

Astoria sounded surprised. As surprised- Draco supposed- as anybody who found an uninvited ex-boyfriend slouched on her couch, brooding in her living room, in the dark past midnight. His only comfort was that she didn't sound afraid of him.

"I…." He didn't really have any words. Or maybe he had too many of them, like: I'm sorry, or I love you, or don't make me leave, or are you dating fucking Ciano, or can't we just go back, but he felt too weary to muster the courage to say any of those and all he really wanted, no needed, was to touch her, or maybe just see her face, to stay in her presence if only for a moment while he found the courage to move past the hurt.

A debate took over Astoria's face before she finally arranged her face into a worried look and said, "you shouldn't have left a few days ago, without your discharge orders. You're not completely well."

"I'll survive," he declared hoarsely.

She moved closer, sat on the coffee table directly in front of him and waved her wand over him. The blue light of a diagnostic spell flared from the tip and Draco kept himself still as her wand systematically moved over his body. She clucked her tongue every time the blue shifted to a dull violet as her wand passed over the places where he was sore, but there was no bright red light, an indication of a major injury.

"You still shouldn't have left. You know better than to leave without a discharge."

"I…" he tried once again to explain. "Astoria, I almost used a cruciatus on him. I was so close." He shook his head, anything to keep him from looking into her eyes. The concern there would undermine his resolve.

"But you didn't." Her voice, devoid of judgment, held gentleness. Her hand traced his jaw, turning his head towards hers. "You didn't. That's what matters, Draco."

"And if I did?"

She tilted his chin, made him meet her eyes. In the darkness, all he could see were the twin light of her pupils, the furrow of her worried brow and the soft slope of her mouth turned into a frown.

"Then you get punished. You make amends. But Draco, you didn't. And you have to stop blaming yourself for things that you haven't committed."

"I've done so much," he sounded broken as only a man in the dark can be. He felt her searching hand cup his cheeks. Tomorrow, he'd vow to be a Malfoy, unaffected and collected. Tonight, he'd allow himself to be merely Draco, broken, in front of her.

"You want to tell me what happened?"

He searched for the words that he wanted to say, then decided to explain the things that he had been doing. For himself. To be better.

"I- I went to Katie. Bell." In case she didn't know, he added: "in my sixth year, the year Dumbledore was… when I was…." he shuddered as he tried to find the words. "when I…."

Astoria tightened her hand on his. "I know her. I remember. I was in school then too."

"You'd have been in what, your fourth year?"

She shrugged. "But I knew what happened to her."

The thing was, Draco was certain she didn't know everything. She may have known what happened to Katie Bell but she wouldn't have known that he was behind everything.

Astoria was still speaking. "The school heard, of course, you know how it is. There were stories, about the necklace and the Imperius…." He knew the moment when understanding lit upon her. He watched as her hand lifted to her mouth and she gasped. He could only look away.

"That was you." Her shocked whisper echoed in the stillness of the night, reverberating in his mind.

Quickly, he stood up to make to leave when he felt her grip his wrist.

"Tell me what happened," she said firmly. "You went to see Katie Bell."

He dropped back to the couch but he bowed his head and mostly spoke to his hands.

"The guy, in the hospital, he talked about his wife and at first I thought, well the bastard was accusing me of things I didn't do, so fuck him. But the thing is, Astoria, he was right."

He turned to her to gauge her reaction but her brow remained furrowed with concern instead of disgust and Draco sighed.

"I don't mean I was doing what he said, but what if during the raids his wife was killed and I just stood by. His wife wasn't one of Dumbledore's. She was just some bystander. Then I remembered Bell. I did that to her. All I was thinking was Dumbledore and the Dark Lord, and it was like chess and Katie was merely a pawn that I had to get across the board."

The quiet was a stifling thing, but Astoria made no sound for which Draco was grateful. He was afraid that once he stopped talking, he wouldn't be able to restart this confession.

"So I left the hospital and went to Zabini who had some contacts in the Ministry. Asked him to find out where Bell lives," Draco continued. "I went to her home because I had to…." He paused, "make amends."

Astoria remained silent, the feel of her thumb tracing circles on his hand, was the only thing that urged him on.

"She's living with Marcus Flint."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"You know him?" Draco asked.

"I may not be Slytherin but of course I know him. First, he was in Hogwarts and he's probably the first in a hundred years to repeat his NEWTs. Second, he's a pro-quidditch player. A very popular quidditch player," Astoria replied.

"For the former, I know you're Ravenclaw but don't let Flint repeating his seventh year fool you. The bloke's clever. He did it to avoid getting the mark," Draco explained. "For the latter, you vehemently hate quidditch. You do know it's played on brooms and several balls, right?"

She rolled her eyes. "All right, I concede, I may know nothing about quidditch, but women treat Flint's like he's the second coming of Merlin." Then grumbling, she added, "which is surprising considering those teeth."

Draco felt a small smile on his lips but it left quickly when he realized that rest of what he had to say.

"Astoria, I thought she wouldn't talk to me."

"Did she?"

Draco nodded. "Flint talked to me first then he talked to Bell a bit."

"That was nice of him," Astoria said, curiosity obvious in her voice.

"Then we were in their home and Flint made tea then left us alone. And all I could tell her was sorry." Draco's voice cracked. Just saying the words were difficult, even if it was just a retelling of much more difficult events that happened earlier.

It was a carryover from his father's lessons: a Malfoy never says sorry.

He took a steadying breath. "I thought she would hex me but she just nodded and said, give her some time to accept what I said. But she thanked me…. She thanked me. For making the effort to do that. How could she…."
The sob that tore loose from his throat was the keening cry of a wounded animal. Her arms went around him and she was all warmth and hushed whispers.

Draco didn't know how long they were in that position, with him on the couch and her on the coffee table, their arms intertwined like they where one living being. His heartbeat was an erratic tattoo that she answered with her own; her breathing and his united in the same inhale and exhale.

"And then Longbottom…." His voice trailed off.

"Neville?"

Draco told her about his visit to Dumbledore's tomb, and of how Neville's talk with him stripped him bare.

He thought about forgiveness and mistakes and how hard it was sometimes to stand up again.

"Sometimes," she began when he had finished what he had to say, when his heartbeat had finally slowed, "sometimes, when we get hurt, we don't want an apology because the other person was wrong. Sometimes, we want it so that we know that the other person understands our hurt. Sometimes, it is not about justice. Sometimes it's about understanding and feeling and empathy."

"I don't deserve it," he said, softly, after a moment. "I don't deserve their kindness."

He had finally said it, the thing that had been bothering him from the beginning. Not just with Katie, or the man in St. Mungo's but with her, with Astoria. That he didn't deserve her. That no matter what he did, he would never deserve her.

He dropped his head to his hands, steeling himself for the moment when he had to leave, not just this place but Astoria, whose arms felt like protection and a welcoming and home.

He felt the couch shift next to him as it accommodated her weight. He felt her hand brush his hair from his forehead.

"Draco, do you want to stay tonight?"

888

When she said the words, he understood that it wasn't an invitation to her bed. There was a past and a hurt and- fucking Ciano- and a million other hurdles. So he stayed on her couch and was grateful because he didn't know if he could have survived a night in his home with the weight of his family legacy and the taint of the past smothering away his will to move on.

888

In the darkness, he dreamt. And his dreams were filled with giant snakes and screams coming from the basement of his house. He dreamt of blood on the white marble floor of the dining room, like roses coming to bloom in the middle of winter. He dreamt of a bonelike face sniffing his mother's hair, as the creature pressed a wand into the throbbing of her neck. He dreamt of his father kneeling in pain in front of them, the cackling laugh of Bellatrix the musical accompaniment like a discordant violin.

He didn't know what had happened. As with his other nightmares, he would forget them almost instantaneously, with only the feeling of intense fear and the pounding of his heart remaining as proof that the dreams had visited him. Somehow, he knew his nightmares were about Voldemort and he had read somewhere that maybe his amnesia of them was the way his waking self was protecting his mind.

But tonight the nightmares were vivid and tangible.

So this was novel; this sensation of waking up to warm arms and soothing words after the intense racing of his heart and almost having his sanity stripped away. There was nothing for him to do but stare straight ahead in the darkness. He tried his hardest to keep his eyes open, tried to hold onto everything solid and real and present because closing his eyes would mean sleep which held the past and his crimes.

"You're safe." Her voice was a lifeline he clung to. "It's just a dream." He probably had woken her up with his screams, for she was sitting in the couch next to him and he tried to huddle into her warmth.

He remembered how he lost her. He remembered how he pushed her away, thinking that she wouldn't be hurt because in the end, it was for the best.

He was wrong. He remembered the contents of her letters, the ones that he never answered but had kept bound in a silk ribbon inside a sandalwood box. He remembered how she had looked at the first few months of their separation, as if she had lost weight and was weary.

As the saying goes about good intentions and the road to hell.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he whispered, knowing that it was not an apology for waking her up, but rather for everything else. Despite his confessions earlier, he had never talked to her about the heart of the issue between them.

Whenever they had argued, even when he was at fault, he had never apologized to her. He'd make it up to her. He'd make sure to let her choose what to do on their date or he'd go out of his way to make sex more pleasurable than usual for her. But he had never said the words.

A Malfoy never says sorry. His father's voice.

But in the darkness, at that moment, he was merely Draco.

Then he realized that all this time, while to everyone else he was Malfoy, former Death Eater, Slytherin wanker and Dumbledore's assassin, to Astoria he was always, only Draco, merely himself in all of his scarred and shattered glory.

"I'm sorry," he repeated again and again, a hoarse whisper in the dark.

She understood. And Astoria, being Astoria merely shook her head and whispered, "we're okay, Draco."

Because the cover of darkness made him brave and because bravery loosened his tongue, he spoke, the words rushing from him in desperation. Words, that before, he had never declared to her. "I love you and I don't deserve you. If you're with Ciano, I understand. I just need you to know this. I love you. But if you decide you want me, I can't promise not to hurt you unintentionally. I'm not a good person. But I love you."

He heard her broken gasp and felt her arms shudder around him, and when he pulled slightly away, he saw the tears that trailed down her cheeks, tracks turned silver by the moonlight.

"If you lo-" Draco swallowed- "love him. If you are happy with him, then I want you to be happy. But I want to tell you. I need you to know. I-" his voice broke. "I love you."

The remained unmoving in the dark, their arms tangled up in each other, their bodies wrapped in his confession. They sat in silence for a long time while Draco, in his mind, bartered with fate to keep them locked in this little pocket of time and space, to prevent these things from running elsewhere, to hold the world from its unending spin.

Finally, she spoke. "Rodolfo's a good friend and my training partner in the program. So we spend a lot of time together."

Friend.

"But Daphne's wedding." He protested because he feared the strange fluttering of hope in his chest. He feared that the crushing weight of hopelessness would be worse than his present state if her words were not real.

"I needed a date."

"Daphne said-" He paused at the sight of her cocked eyebrow.

There were a hundred words in that expression. Words like: What the hell were you thinking? Why did you not talk to me instead? And the worst of all: You believed Daphne? Of all people? None of these, of course, she said. And he saw how he could have made that mistake and how it was an injustice to her. Because Astoria, his Astoria, never assumed things.

He of course, he let himself assume the worst of the situation. His mind was distorting what he saw to fit his image of himself. That he did not deserve her. That he was not meant to have her. As if sensing when the realization came upon him, Astoria cupped her hand on his cheek and wiped away his tears.

"I love you too." Astoria's broken voice was both a knife and a balm. And maybe, maybe that's all we need."

This night was the first time he saw her cry. He kissed away the silver trails of tears. Then he pulled her in his arms and together they cried some more and they fell asleep on her couch tangled in each other.

The next day he went to the Manor. He spent three hours talking with his mother. The first hour he had spent rationalizing with her, talking about the need for an heir and how, short of inbreeding, they might not find another pureblood that has escaped the stigma of Voldemort support like the Greengrasses. Piqued that he never admitted it to her, even if she suspected, Narcissa remained unconvinced, claiming he was still too young.

The next hour he spent cajoling her, talking about how she was aging gracefully, as if not a day over thirty and how his bride to be could never compare to her. His mother, unbelievably, merely fluffed her hair as if this was the most obvious thing but still refused.

By the last hour, he was so frustrated and so despondent that he gazed wearily at her.

He said simply. "Mother, she's the one I would give up dancing for."

He left with a three hundred year old, diamond and platinum, goblin-wrought ring encased inside a silk and velvet box, nestled in the pocket of his coat.

888

A month after, when he stayed the night, he slipped the box in her dresser drawer, knowing, wishing that she would find it. He hoped for assumption, because it would spare him the act of asking.

When a week passed without any mention, he peeked into her dresser. The way the box was haphazardly returned in the drawer, very much unlike how it originally was positioned, with absolutely no attempt of at least hiding the fact of its discovery told him that yes, she saw the ring. And he wished that she would assume that he was proposing. At one point he even wished that she would assume that he was seeing someone behind her back and proposing to that person. He wished she would assume anything, anything at all to lead them to the conversation of marriage. Because in his mind, there was no way she could not have thought of marriage.

Yet she still did not mention it.

He avoided her for two weeks. He told her that he needed to sort out Malfoy business. In truth, he was waiting for her to come to him, to confront him. And when he couldn't bear it any longer, he was the one that went to her. He wanted her to ask him about a fenced in garden complete with gnomes, two point four kids and a kneezle. Instead she asked him about his day.

So he blurted out: "Astoria, do you think about marriage? You know, the fenced in house and the two point four children?"

It didn't help that that marriage got him thinking about fatherhood then briefly about Lucius before he remembered that his father had almost as good as sold him off to the Dark Lord. Because what kind of a father would he make if that was the example he had grown up to?

"Draco, I think a point four kid is frightening, even from a wizarding perspective despite our capability of putting arms back to splinched victims." He didn't know what she saw in his expression because she changed tract mid comment and finished more seriously. "Sure, perhaps someday."

Did she mean someday with him? Someday with somebody else? Was this her way of turning him down nicely?

It was then that he realized, after how he was treated in The Leaky Calderon, after their first date, after how shabbily he treated her the past few months, after the incident in Diagon Alley and St. Mungo's, after the war and the implications of his last name that he wished to hoist off on her, at the very least she deserved a grand gesture. Except he wasn't the big gestures kind of guy. Not anymore. Perhaps once he was, when the gesture meant a two page spread in the society pages and his mother calling the shots, making the restaurant reservations and tipping off the reporters. Because the Malfoy name of the yesteryears deserved a grandeur commensurate to its stature. As it was, the Malfoy name meant nothing and all he had now was the heirloom ring and absolutely no idea of what to do or say to her. All he knew was that kneeling was involved and he didn't kneel.

The one time he knelt was when the Dark Lord had bent mercilessly over him and cast the spell that would scar his forearm and forever curse him to the Dark Lord's beck and call. And he remembered that upon standing, something felt shattered in him, something he had never reassembled again.

Then he remembered Katie and Marcus, trying despite their past, taking their relationship a day at a time. He remembered Neville, giving him not just the benefit of the doubt, but an afternoon of more compassion than Draco had ever experienced in his entire life.

Yet somehow he waited too long to speak because Astoria looked defeated.

"Draco, I was hoping you would ask nicely." Then she added a little wryly, "not that you're obliged."

They stared at each other for what seemed like forever and a day and he could only watch as her face crumpled with the realization that he could not say it.

The words were trapped in his mind.

Will you honor me by being my wife?

Because you are the moon and I am the all the world's oceans whose tides have always been yours to command. I have tried living without you and it has left me empty. You are more elemental than magic. You are more vital than fire and water and the air that I breathe.

He loved her and he would lose her just because he could not say the words. The fear of her rejection stilled his tongue, and he knew that there was no way he would say the words he wanted to say, the words he kept secret because they were beautiful and true and raw and thus more powerful in their ability to wound.

He watched as she turned away from him, slowly, gracefully, with dignity enough for both their Pureblood names. He watched as she made to leave. Pride and self-preservation clogged up his throat and there were no words, not even the snarling ones that were second nature to him.

In the end, all he could come up with was this:

"Astoria. This-" He pressed a fist to his chest, an encompassing gesture of the love he had for her. "-This is forever."

His voice was rough and angry. Not the expected pleading tone but she must have heard it, the desperate pleading in his voice beneath it all- the way she recognized all of his hidden truths- because she turned. And despite his personal injunction against kneeling, he dropped down to both knees and opened the box.

There was silence.

As she pushed his hair from his eyes and when she gave him that look- the same one on the balcony the night they first met, the one she reserved for him the night that he apologized he, when that unnerving look of understanding that had made him whole instead of shattering him crossed her face, he knew.

There was only her and him and the kind of love that exists that need not be spoken of.

I love you as certain dark things are loved,
…..between the shadow and the soul.
-Sonnet XVII from 100 love sonnets, Pablo Neruda

Finite