Chapter 8

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He had given her months warning about Pansy Nott's Halloween festivities, but even on the day of, Astoria was bustling around and trying to tie up a few loose ends. A party was a party was a party, but Draco had specifically mentioned this particular one, instructed that they were both to attend together and commissioned that she outfit them for ... well, the scandalous theme.

She'd had to get creative. The true heart of their ancestor's spells and rituals often required full nudity. It was a tantalizing thought, but unless she was truly sauced, Astoria wouldn't have shown up anywhere completely naked.

She was rather pleased with the outfits she'd commissioned, however, as simple as they were in the end.

"You summoned me?" Draco said as he stepped into the solarium. Astoria - his wife, his mind supplied not for the first or last time - was sitting in her usual spot, but unlike the usual serene mien she projected in this particular space, he could see a vibrant, fiery edge nearly tinting the air around her. When she turned at his voice, his lips twitched.

Her eyes were bright, excited, if he wasn't mistaken.

He knew there was much that weighed on the little woman, how quietly dispirited she'd been upon their initial introduction, but the last months had been like watching her slowly bloom into something else entirely. He still saw that heaviness in her eyes, knew he should probe at it for Voldemort asked questions about how things were progressing, but he was loathe to dim her further when she was tentatively finding full color again.

It wasn't how he should be thinking; he should be using the small evidences of her trust in him to his advantage - and to her ultimate destruction.

As long as her true affiliations were ever a mystery, however, she would be safe. He would keep her safe. Perhaps her uncle was keen on using his blood to move up the ranks, but Draco was already there, and thus far he had easily maneuvered around his associate's queries. The fact of the matter was, there was no real proof of anything; only speculation that her brother was yet leading a small sect of the resistance and that she was, in fact, in contact with him, helping him.

It could not be proved and thus far he had not seen evidence of anything. He could evade the more direct questions and still answer, quite honestly, that as far as he could tell, she was a victim of circumstance.

"Draco?" she called for the second time as she crossed the room towards him. "Don't tell me I must give a password now. I was quite relieved to be rid of the practice when I graduated Hogwarts. They got to be rather ridiculous my last year. Saucy wench and Merlin's pants were particularly memorable," she chattered at him, still trying to get some sort of reaction. His gaze was on her, but his mind was somewhere else.

"Hmm?" Draco hummed, only having caught the end of her statement. "Pants? Why would a wench be in need of pants?"

He sounded foolish, but her lips were turning up into a smile and Draco found he didn't much mind.

"I said saucy wench and Merlin's pants," she corrected, smile playing at her lips. She thought on asking him where his mind had been, but it was more than likely he wouldn't tell her anyways. She could read a few emotions in him now - amusement and mischief, in particular - but there was still much he kept from her. That he showed her anything was surprise enough. Astoria hadn't expected such when she'd decided to accept his alarmingly suspicious offer of marriage. She had just wanted out of her uncle's home.

"And I was just trying to get your attention," she added as she came to him and clasped her hands lightly in front of her. "Your father is already dressed and gone and your costume for the night's events will take longer to put together. We are to be late. Fashionably so."

A single brow rose at her pronouncement. "And what, dear wife, is going to take so very long. I should think I'm fairly accomplished at dressing myself." He could see mischief light in her eyes, and as he'd found often in his interactions with her, he was both curious and amused.

Astoria pulled her wand free and summoned a package to her hands. The demure smile she offered him did not match the devilish gleam in her eyes, however, and Draco found himself suspicious as she pulled a pair of what some might call trousers from the packaging.

"This, dear husband, is your costume." The charcoal gray deerskin was soft and luxurious in her hands and her lips twitched as she watched him eye the scant amount of fabric.

"That's it?"

"Well, the artist is waiting upstairs for you." Her lips curled further.

"The artist?"

"We're dipping back in time to our roots and our ancestry, no? There was our Greek and Roman counterparts, but closer to home was the Picts. They traditionally were painted in blue woad, but yours will be a bit more subdued. The color of your trousers," she replied cheerfully as she pressed the cloth into his hands.

"I've enough to cover my bits, and some paint," he said, amused skepticism lighting his features.

It was easy to play with her and he'd rather found he liked doing it, watching the emotions pass across her face. Everyone he interacted with hid everything, and though he knew Astoria had her secrets, most everything she felt danced in her eyes, at the tiniest curls of her mouth, in the way her hands fluttered and how she shifted ever so slightly this way or that, body language absolutely telling.

"You said it was to be a rather scandalous event. I'm making sure we fit in," she said, sniffing lightly before making a shooing motion at him. "Go on then. We're already going to be late."

He moved a couple of steps back, smile beginning to curl his mouth at her. "And my father? Did you send him on half-naked as well?"

"He's a bit more Julius Caesar," she said even as she claimed the two steps he'd given up as he backed towards the door. "Shoo."

"He gets to be one of the best military minds in wizarding history and I'm a forest sprite?" His eyes lit at her expression and he went one further. "What about you then? Perhaps a wood nymph in nay but this paint you so love?"

He laughed at the sour expression she gave him. "I'm going," he said, teeth flashing in a grin.

"You're a warrior," she corrected him, huffing her ire as she set her hands to her hips and glared at him. "And you'll just have to wait and see what I am. Now go, else I shall be forced to some dire measure."

His grin went slightly crooked at the picture she made; angry kitten. There was the threat of claws, but they would never cut deep. The laughter he often had around her, the smiles she elicited from him, felt odd much of the time, but it was another thing he'd found he rather liked when he was in her presence. He was wary to call such a thing happiness, and his mind shied away at the merest suggestion of such.

"Mayhap I'd like to see your prowess with a wand." He grinned again at her unamused expression before taking several more steps towards the stairs. "Going, going."

He really did go that time, and Astoria's lips twitched as she watched him bound up the sweeping stairwell. His designer trousers and button up should have made the energetic movement conspicuous or out of place, but just that moment, it suited. They were both well beyond Hogwarts and there was much in this new life to be weighted down by, but when he smiled and played with her like that, it was easy to forget, at least for a few moments, that so much was so terribly wrong. It was like they were young and had a chance for real laughter and enjoyment in trivialities.

It was like the moments they should have had.

They were very dangerous moments. It was dangerous to like his company, dangerous to feel at ease with him, safe with him here at Malfoy Manor. It was dangerous to be too comfortable or too complacent.

It was so very hard to fight something that felt so ... right. But Draco couldn't be right or good for her, not truly. She had to keep reminding herself of that. It would make it easier when the house of cards eventually crumbled.

Such thoughts would have to wait for further contemplation, however. For now, there was the All Hallow's Eve gala and she, too, had to get ready.

Despite his reservations, the 'costume' Astoria had chosen for him suited. If it could be called a costume - it didn't cover much at all, though she was right that the Pictish looking charcoal patterns on his arms and chest, his back, were a costume all themselves. It should have looked odd with the fitted deerskin trousers that only reached just past his knees, but it didn't. The two eras of decoration flattered one another.

She had an eye for beauty and aesthetics. Not entirely practical, he thought as he headed down the stairs barefoot, but tasteful and pleasing, and fitting for the night's event.

He'd been informed she was waiting for him, but a quick glance around the entry hall didn't reveal her slight form and he headed for the solarium.

It was dim in the glass room for it was already completely night, but the moon shown full and combined with the few candles floating about the room, there was definitely enough light in which to see by.

His gaze was drawn to the movement on the far end of the suite near the aisles of roses his mother had once kept up herself. "Are you ready?" he called as he moved further into the room, intent on seeing the costume she'd kept secret.

"Mmm, just about," Astoria said absently as she worked the blooming red rose into her tumbling curls. Her lips were scarlet, but everything else was the same dark charcoal as Draco's costume. She'd made sure they matched, but her look had needed one more touch and a perfectly red rose in the darkness of her hair had seemed a good idea.

It was rather difficult to do without a mirror, though, and when it felt secure in the pins already there, Astoria turned about and found Draco not more than a few paces away. "Does it look alright?"

He'd been rather preoccupied by the pale expanse of her back framed in charcoal silk, her hair brushing the curve at the base of her spine when she moved just so, but when she turned about, there was so much more to appreciate about her choice in attire. Movement exposed a slit in the draped silk that nearly touched her hip and when she fully faced him, it became clear that it not only dipped scandalously low in the back, but in the front as well.

It was all draped; the neckline was a silky bunch near her navel which traveled up in a halter around her neck. What came around the back to make a draping silk dress, if it could truly be called that, rested at the curve of her arse, the hem draping just below her knees. Her pale skin was luminescent against all the darkness and looked even softer than the silk sliding over it.

"Draco? Rose? No rose?" Astoria prompted again. She was astutely keeping her gaze from lingering too long on the woad patterns painted across his chest. Or the lean muscles beneath. It had seemed like a good idea at the time she'd commissioned all their clothes for this eve's celebrations, but just now she was not entirely sure.

"Keep it," he said, finally answering her as he came to stand in her space. "It suits." Draco reached up and shifted a lock of hair from obscuring the blood red petals, perhaps letting the silk of her hair slide over his finger longer than necessary.

Astoria was more aware than she would have liked of him reaching out to her, but all too soon his hand was gone and she breathed again. "The woad suits as well," she offered then. "Do you like it?"

"I do," Draco replied, features softening ever so slightly at her question and the hesitant look in her eyes as if she truly did care if he was pleased. She had no reason to be, most especially for such trivial matters. "In the end I think it will be my indecorous lack of shoes that makes the old bitties titter," he added, lips twitching.

"You barbarous heathen." Her lips curled slightly in response, eyes lighting to reflect the mischievous humor in his mercury gaze.

"At least I might say my beautiful, decorous wife enabled me." He could feel more than see her blush, for it was dim in the room and the heat in the air around her spiked slightly, but before she could truly demure or babble away the honestly given compliment, Draco held out his arm. "Shall we? I'm sure we're likely well beyond fashionably late."

"A Malfoy is never anything but fashionable. We shall set the trend," she replied, voice wry despite the slight flutter unsettling her inside.

Her hand was only curled very lightly in the crook of his arm, but Astoria was more aware of the small touch than she likely ought to be as he led her toward the entry hall and Apparation point there. Draco Malfoy was her husband, yes, but in this world with the way their arranged marriage had come about, there was nothing there to trust.

There was no time to examine her conflicting feelings, however, because her thoughts were abruptly cut off when they disappeared with a soft 'pop'.