- Draco -
And when I told her Astoria might be seeing someone else and that maybe the child was his, there was nothing dreamy in her eyes. I told her about what I knew, nights spent away, and what I suspected, nights I had left her to sleep alone on the endless expanse of our bed.
I told her about the sheets wrinkled between us like a mountain range and an endless chasm that not even angry words could reach across anymore.
"Where were you? Where were you, Astoria? You sure weren't here."
"Luna," I pleaded, "Luna, you know her better than anyone. Is she seeing someone else?"
"She loves no one as well as you, Draco."
"You've quite the way with words these days, Draco," Blaise says. "How much time are you spending with Luna? Quite a bit, I think."
We're sitting on the terrace in Mother's garden, and he's looking past the roses across the grassy hills. He inhales deeply and exhales in rings of smoke. I don't know where he picked up the habit, but it suits him.
I can imagine Astoria underneath Blaise, her naked breasts crushed against his chest. His bobbing ass between her knees. It's so vivid I have to turn away, afraid that I might throw up.
Blaise turns his penetrating, black eyes on me and says with characteristic crassness, "I had her plenty before you married her. I picked her cherry and taught her all her tricks. You should be thanking me."
"Her lover should, too," he adds thoughtfully and lights another cigarette.
I launch for him, but his protego is faster and slams me back in the chair hard enough that I almost tip over.
"Luna seems to spend as much time with her as she does you. It's a strange thing for a husband and a wife to fuck the same woman, don't you think?" Blaise blows rings, each one smaller than the other.
I can feel my face burn. "I have never!"
Blaise taps his cigarette on the edge of Mother's antique Aynsley saucer.
"If you know anything that you're not telling me -" I hiss.
"My mother is a liar and a whore," he says. "I recognize either when I see one, and you're both."