Chapter 10: Beyond the Canvas

A/N- prompt used: [Color] Blue
Word Count- 1073
Warnings- panic attack

Astoria had been painting nothing but scenes of the sea for weeks now and Draco was about to lose his mind. He couldn't take much more of her false blues that stopped at the edge of the canvas. He needed the real thing.

So, even though it was just barely spring in England and the clouds were out in full force, Draco took his wife sailing.

When the shoreline was nothing but a blurry brown line in the distance, Draco lowered the sails and let the boat drift in the calm ocean water.

"We've been married nearly a year and I'm still finding myself surprised by the things you know how to do, Draco Malfoy."

Draco traversed the short deck and plopped down by his wife, drinking in the sight of her bright yellow dress surrounded by the vast blue of the ocean surrounding her. She smiled timidly up at him from under her large floppy hat.

"I had my wand revoked for a year after my trial. I learned a lot of things during that time. Things I never thought I'd try." Draco shrugged, glancing sheepishly around his sailboat, his cheeks pinking when he felt Astoria's steady gaze on him.

"Like cooking?"

"Yeah."

"And horseback riding?"

"Yup."

"And interior decorating?"

Draco chuckled. "Well, we had to get the Manor back into suitable living conditions somehow."

He glanced at Astoria out of the corner of his eye. She nodded knowingly and he sighed in relief, very glad he didn't have to explain his statement any further. He wasn't sure he could talk about it, even though it had been ten years since the Dark Lord's stay in the Malfoy family home. He still had nightmares about that year, about that man. He probably always would.

"So why sailing?" asked Astoria. "What in the world made you buy a boat and learn how to pilot it?"

Draco swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. "Well…"

He paused and finally turned his body toward Astoria, focusing all of his attention on her. She had one hand clutching the wooden bench beneath her and the other weighing down the big floppy hat on her head to keep it from flying away in the slight breeze. Her hair was in one long braid that draped across her left shoulder and her pink lips were twisted up into a curious smile.

Draco smiled back and finished his thought with a little more confidence. "When I couldn't perform real magic, I searched for the next best thing." He looked up at the mast and the folded white canvas that clung to either side of it. "Manipulating the parts of a sailboat to harness the wind was the closest thing to magic that I could find."

Astoria inched her hand along the bench until her pinky butted up against Draco's leg. "That explains the name then."

Ventus.

He'd named his boat after the spell that emitted a spiral of wind from one's wand. Children learned that kind of magic very early on in the schooling. Draco found that wizards took the simplicity of that spell for granted.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Astoria asked.

Draco gaze shot up to meet Astoria's. "Of course."

She licked her lips and her eyes glowed fiercely in the ray of sunshine that seemed to beam down on them and them alone through the part in the gray clouds.

"I am deathly afraid of the ocean."

Draco stared at her for a long time. He waited for the punchline. It never came.

"Are you— Wait, wait wait. Hold on. Are— are you serious?"

Tori nodded her head profusely, her eyes wide and panicked. Draco glanced down at the hand clutching the seat beneath them, at the way her knuckles had turned white from the force of her death grip on it.

"Oh, for Salazar's sake! Love, why didn't you say anything?"

"I'm okay if we're moving! Like earlier, I was fine, totally fine, completely fine, but now we're stopped and I feel like we're stranded out here in the middle of the ocean, and like I'll never see land again, and I'm starting to freak out, Draco! I'm really starting to lose it!"

Draco shot out of his seat and immediately began the process of unfurling the sails and turning the boat back toward shore. Once everything was in position and the boat was once again slicing through the sea water, Draco dashed to his wife's side and wrapped her protectively in his embrace.

She was hyperventilating a bit and Draco whipped off her hat and threaded his fingers in her hair, pulling her head to his chest.

"Hey, listen to me. Are you listening? I want you to feel me breathe. I want you to match me, okay? Breathe in…one, two, three… breathe out… one, two, three… again, breathe in… one, two, three… breathe out… one, two, three…"

He wasn't sure how long they continued like that, how long it was before Astoria's panic attack had subsided, but the shoreline was in site and the clouds had finally dissipated. The sky was an almost unearthly blue after having spent so long in the gray.

Draco leaned back and pulled Astoria's head up until they were face-to-face. He wiped under her eyes with the pads of his thumbs.

"Sorry."

He smiled at her, his precious wife who'd moved the clouds with her tears. "You have nothing to be sorry about. We can't always help what we're afraid of, no matter how irrational that fear is."

Tori snorted and smacked him in the arm. "It's not irrational!"

It absolutely was irrational. They were wizards. If anything, they could just apparate back to shore. But Astoria was laughing again and her skin was regaining its color, so Draco didn't bother correcting her.

"I'm sorry about cutting our trip short though," she said, her voice going soft again. "I know how much you were looking forward to it."

Draco leaned down and picked up her silly hat from the boat floor. He placed it on top of her head and pulled the ends toward his face so he could kiss her quickly on the lips.

"That's alright, I've gotten my fill of the sea. We can go home now."

He didn't need the real blues of the ocean that stretched out beyond the canvas.

Because the blues of her eyes went on endlessly.