Disclaimer and Notes can be found in Chapter 1

Counting Stars and Passing Cars 7/14

Draco/Asteria

Inspiration: Hope for the Hopeless

She is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Draco learns about Winston Churchill in the pro-Muggle re-education classes he is required to attend bi-weekly, and though he knows the jowly Muggle was speaking of Russia, he thinks the quote suits Asteria Greengrass just as well.

The ways she confuses him are exhaustive and ever expanding. Why does she live in a cramped flat with two roommates when her family could buy her something better? Why does she choose work for the Ministry in an airless cupboard full of dusty historical scrolls when her sister chooses not to work at all? Why did she first reject and ignore him only to approach him herself when he slipped away from a deadly dull Ministry fundraiser to read Muggle Wars of the 20th Century in peace?

He turns her over in his mind, a puzzle he can't quite solve, while he lies awake at night watching moonlight shine through his window. She is not the most beautiful woman of his acquaintance. Her fine, light brown hair and calm brown eyes are easily overlooked. Her mouth is too small for her face and holds her secrets tight inside. She is, as Blaise and Theo remind him when he meets them for drinks on Thursdays, quite average: neither tall nor short, dark nor fair, just strange enough to be odd, not odd enough to be eccentric. Hardly, Blaise drawls, the most obvious future Mrs. Malfoy.

Draco doesn't understand it either, but she arrests him, ensnares him. Her mind, heart, and soul are a labyrinth in which he would willingly lose himself. When insomnia drives him from his bed and sends him roaming the halls of the manor, he thinks about her instead of his memories and pats himself on the back for having the wisdom to see what no one else seems to; the mystery of Asteria is his alone to solve.

He sets out to win her heart the best way he can and ignores Theo and Blaise when they laugh at him.

She flatly refuses to attend any society parties, but she is interested in his re-education homework. Together, they read his books, comparing and contrasting events in Muggle history with events in the Wizarding world while sitting on the sagging couch in her flat. He begins to understand her true passion for history, how it shapes her view of people and of the world. He earns her first, real, unguarded smile on that couch, an event that transforms her from quietly pretty to beautiful in his eyes.

Their relationship progresses in fits and starts, surrounded by reminders of wars. She holds his hand for the first time when they attend the "Animals in War" Memorial unveiling at Brook Gate on the edge of Hyde Park, but then he fails to support her as she challenges Blaise's "revisionist views" of Voldemort, and she ignores him for a week. Their first kiss is in front of the Cenotaph in Whitehall, which leads to introducing her to his parents; his father calls her a "blood traitor" and a "Ministry mouthpiece." Draco haphazardly tosses clothing and books into a bag and leaves Malfoy Manor that night.

Asteria's little mouth is a small, hard line when she opens the door to his knock, and he thinks he'll end up in a hotel, but he spends the next two nights sleepless on her couch, as a spring digs into his spine and his thoughts chase themselves around his head. She barely speaks to him, preferring to scrutinize him through shadowed eyes as he turns his mother's owls away and struggles through his homework. I'll never understand her, he thinks, but on the third night, she takes his hand and leads him to her bedroom, so he must be doing something right, though he couldn't say what.

Soon, her flatmates have moved out. Draco's clothes are in the wardrobe, his books on the shelves, and he replaces the couch, gleefully shrinking the old one until it's small enough to fit in the sink and sending it to furniture hell with an Incendio! He applies for and wins a junior position in the Department of Magical Games and Sports and is inordinately proud of his earnings, small as they may be. There's a strange satisfaction to be found in autonomy, in being responsible for putting a roof over his own head for the first time. When he mentions this newfound revelation to her, while they are touring the Imperial War Museum for the third time, she exclaims "Draco Malfoy, did you just grow up?"and kisses him in front of a tour group of giggling Japanese teenagers.

He completes his final re-education class in late spring. His teacher testifies before the Committee on Death Eater Activities and War Restitution that he is rehabilitated and, just like that, he is free. He and Asteria celebrate by going out with Theo and Blaise for drinks and darts. He is glad his love and his friends have learned to get along, somewhat. Blaise calls Asteria "a pain in the arse, but otherwise all right" which is good enough for Draco; he doesn't expect anyone else to understand her the way he does. Holding her hand under the table, listening as she bickers in good-natured fashion with Blaise, all three of them laughing as Theo tries to chat up a Muggle blonde and is shut down hard, Draco is overcome with a feeling he tentatively identifies as peace.

He starts to sleep through the night for the first time since he was fifteen.

Lucius intrudes on his peace, as unwelcome as the icy finger of winter on a summer night. Asteria finds him sitting at their small table, cat in his lap, unopened letter before him. She fusses, making him tea and kissing his brow, before leaving him to make his own decision with a whispered "Keep calm and carry on, my love." She disappears into the bedroom with a history of Gaul and shuts the door.

He breaks the wax seal, and his father's letter is depressing, but unsurprising. He leaves it behind and pads to the bedroom, the thin carpet cool under his bare feet. She looks up as he enters, a question on her face, but he just shakes his head and pulls his clothes off, letting them fall to the floor as he crawls between the sheets. He sighs rests his head on her pillow, close enough that his breath stirs her brown hair. She tucks a bookmark into her book and sets it on her green-painted bedside table.

She turns toward him, her hand raised to cradle his jaw in her palm. "The Lord of the Manor is displeased, I take it?"

"You could say that. It appears the Heir of the Manor will be disinherited if he doesn't straighten up and find someone 'more suitable.'" Her fingers cease gently stroking over his cheekbone, and he turns his head to kiss her palm. "It doesn't matter."

She bites her lip, a thousand thoughts he'll never really know behind her eyes. "How can it not matter? He's your father, and you love him."

"Yeah." It does hurt, and he knows some part of him will always tremble under his father's disapproval. "But you're my everything, and I love you, too. We're okay. What do a fortune and a mansion have on all of this?" He makes a vague motion meant to encompass their shabby walk-up.

She kisses him until he closes his eyes. Her fingers resume tenderly tracing his features.

"Your father will come around," she whispers, and he grunts noncommittally. "He will," she insists. "By the time we're ready to have children, all will be forgiven. I can't imagine either of your parents giving up a grandchild, even if they don't entirely approve of that child's mother. So we don't need their approval to get married; they'll get over it."

"Maybe," he mutters into the pillow, but then he hears—he understands—the promise of a future in her words, the unspoken yes to an unasked question. He lunges to his knees in the center of the bed, and she looks up at him with her deep, dark eyes, her cupid's bow lips curled enigmatically.

"Will you marry me?" he asks, and her smile bursts forth, transforming something that was already remarkable into something beautiful right before his eyes.

Cold in a summer breeze
Yeah, you're shivering
On your bended knee
Still, when your heart is sore
And the heavens pour
Like a willow bending with the storm, you'll make it

Hope for the Hopeless
A Fine Frenzy