Idk if everyone knows this or not (Cursed Child lore) but it is canon that Astoria suffers from a fatal "blood malediction" throughout her entire life that I guess is like an ancient curse upon her entire family? Obviously I'm picking and choosing Astoria canon at this point but that seems to be sort of undeniable vs the nothing we know about the rest of her life so…there's the context, if you need it.

Ummmm also this is the last chapter so we're going on a ride :)


What never made any sense to her, not for the rest of her life, was how they had been allowed to come out of it as they did. Lucius had suffered his injury, and his pain never was never fully resolved, but eventually he was healthy again. Bellatrix died; did that even count? Not to Narcissa, not really. She had come out of it so entirely intact, with her husband and son beside her, while everyone else seemingly had their punishment, and for what? What had the Weasleys done, what fault did Andromeda have? How could anyone say that Severus deserved to die in the hours before he could have been relieved of it all forever? Sirius spent 12 years in prison and then more in the prison of his childhood home waiting to be the father he had promised to be, the one who was so dearly needed. She wanted to tell someone about all of this, somehow make one grand and final apology so that the world knew that she knew that it was wrong. But it sounded like boasting, and when she brought it up privately, people brushed the worry away.

"No one should have died," they said. They didn't want her in place of someone else. Couldn't someone humor her, be bitter, be cruel? Reassure her that yes, they had spent nights awake wondering why her son was alive and so happy and so successful, and her husband still slept beside her instead of being driven out of his mind in prison?

Then she found out Astoria was sick.

Draco had always known, it turned out, but he had not wanted to disturb his parents further by sharing it at first, and then it hardly seemed relevant to bring up to them when they were so far away, and she was doing so well. Yes, she was frail, but they weren't there to see it, and it barely stopped her from doing anything – including the things she should have resisted.

They did wait, as all their parents had advised. They waited several years, and Astoria did even succeed in becoming a nurse healer, despite the schoolwork and the internships draining her down to nothing each day. But at the hospital babies were born, and then her sister had one, and one day Astoria realized that she wasn't actually 18 anymore, and she was perfectly respectably married, and they were more than settled down. More than that, Draco wanted it. She followed his eyes across restaurants to tables of families, and she remembered falling in love with him when he was a perpetual babysitter for two incorrigible little boys.

He tried to dissuade her and failed, rather happily despite his reservations. No one really understood the curse; if she wanted children, the Healers said, she might as well have them while she could. And it wasn't hard for them, except –

Lucius and Narcissa were summoned out of their bed in the middle of the night to the hospital in Marrakesh to see a premature grandson and a failing daughter-in-law, and to relive the years of a hurting, tortured Draco turned in on himself.

"I should have been stronger when she asked," he said to them as they stood around the baby's bassinet. "I shouldn't have let her do this, just because I wanted it."

"She and I spoke about it many times, Draco, and she did it just as much from her own wishes," his mother murmured to him. "And I think she's going to be ok. The Healers have all said they're both going to be fine."

Lucius, however, was too tongue-tied to speak, as he relived something horrible.


She was fine, eventually, but she never went back to work, and Narcissa did not have to wait too many years to get the news she had longed for.

We've decided we want him to go to Hogwarts, Draco wrote to them, so we think it would be better if he grew up in England.

But –

And Astoria wants to know that I'm near my family, if something happen to her.

So that was to be their punishment. Draco's unending unhappiness. She had been foolish enough to think that had been quenched, and his parents absolved of seeing it. Well, she had asked for the pain.

They started at the beach, alone, and enjoyed a spring and summer there before Draco started a new job at Gringotts. But then it became evident yet again that there really was to be no independence for them.

Astoria did want Draco to be near his parents. She wanted to be too, in a more desperate way. Her own were well-off enough, but they were older, and looking into retirement for her father and planning for their own care needs, and downsizing their house. So perhaps she had tricked her husband a bit to pull him away from a world that he loved, and towards the one they needed. A summer at the beach, plans spoken for weatherizing the house for four season use, happy days on the Muggle high street. But she had wanted to leave Marrakesh because of the noise and her fear of Scorpius, now fully mobile and beginning to show the typical signs of childish, untethered magic, wandering into trouble in a moment when she couldn't help but fall asleep. Close proximity to the sea didn't seem like a much safer solution. The Manor, however, was ironclad and peaceful, and full of watchful elves even if Lucius and Narcissa were not there. Draco agreed, readily, after just a few weeks of seeing how her nerves frayed when she was alone.

Of course he didn't have to work. They could have stayed anywhere if he would have stayed home. They could have hired help anywhere, too, but Astoria didn't like that idea.

"I don't want to be babysat while I take care of my only child, Draco," she insisted when he brought it up. Even as she so obviously deteriorated, they were paralyzed by the thoughts of how it should have been.

She didn't mind the Manor; she had never known it as a prison, or as a boardinghouse for evildoers. Not only did it not matter if Scorpius wandered, but when he did it was down onto soft expanses of grass and into colorful flowerbeds. His grandmother followed him about, indulging him in everything he asked for, and he would go sit on Lucius's knee at his desk and make thumbprints out of his inkwell. They were happy enough, and it's not that Draco was absent. He was very regular with his schedule, rarely brought work home, took Scorpius out early on weekend mornings to observe the daily rituals of Diagon Alley. He insisted on some amount of separation from his parents, even if it was only a schedule of meals without them in their own small dining room. His eyes were truly only for his wife. It was a small life; it was fine. It was not what he had wanted.


"You should make an effort to introduce Astoria to some people, some girls her own age. If you don't want to go out that's your decision, but surely she would like to know someone other than me. Pansy is –"

"No."

"Felicity Grey, then."

"Mum, I really don't think she wants to. Daphne visits, Andromeda visits. She likes you."

"I worry that it's not enough for a young woman."

"She just wants to be with Scorpius."

"Draco, don't you think it's all a bit bleak, especially for Scorpius? She's not – she is still here."

"Mother, please. How many times have we had this conversation? She's exhausted, and no one can do anything about it. There is no way to know what day will be the last."

Narcissa regretted ever wishing for them to come. What kind of horrible curse had the Manor placed on them?

Lucius could only shake his head when she brought her worries to him.

"What can we do? She is sick, whether we think they're handling it well or not. The house will belong to him, someday. To kick him out now because we don't like the way they're living…I think you know what that reminds me of."

"I never said anything about kicking them out, Lucius. You can't really think I'd wish for that. But a vacation, something. A book club."

"It's fairly obvious he has a mortal fear of clubs, or even after work drinks. Send them on a vacation, if you wish. Good luck."


Lucius was wandering somewhat aimlessly through the dark halls, although if you had asked him he would have said he was making sure all the candles were blown out before he went to bed, assuming he was the last one awake and responsible for putting the house to sleep. The moon was full, and it provided a pleasant glow under which he could enjoy his home, and relive some old, old memories of the place it had been in his childhood. Eventually he reached the top of the stairs and meant to turn and go back to Narcissa, but something caught his eye. The French door to the conservatory, open just far enough to come into his periphery. He braced himself on the banister and went down, slowly, to investigate.

Draco was there, pacing slowly on the paths between the plants with Scorpius in his arms, his little pajama-ed legs wrapped around his father and head lolling on his shoulder. At the same age, Draco would have been far too big to carry like that; Scorpius took after his mother in all but his looks. Lucius could not walk lightly enough to stifle the tapping of his cane on the marble entryway floor as he approached, and Draco turned to meet him.

"He couldn't sleep," Draco said in a voice just above nothing at all.

"I don't mean to bother you. I was just checking things and I saw the door open."

"I'm sorry I made you come down."

"Don't think of it. I don't come in here enough anymore."

They kept on together, making another circuit of the humid room before Draco stopped at the wall of windows.

"Astoria was…not good tonight. She didn't get up for dinner, and I think it upset him."

"You should have come to eat with us."

Draco made some kind of gesture at that, a shrug or maybe even a wince. He leaned forward over his son and rested his head on the glass.

"Don't you think we should go to a Muggle doctor? Maybe she's just sick with something from being around people in the city. That's possible, isn't it? Why should the Healers know everything?"

Lucius ran his tongue between his teeth as he considered this. "You should try whatever you like, if you feel like you can work out how to do it. But her family has known about this for generations, and I like to think the Healers at our disposal are not that inept, to completely misdiagnose such a sick woman."

"I wish Professor Snape was here."

"Well…I wish for that too, Draco, but you know he left many talented people behind. Is this idea, a Muggle doctor, something Astoria will consider?"

"No." Draco's voice was trembling. "She says it's a waste of time."

Lucius was observing Scorpius; he knew a child playing possum when he saw it. Indeed, at the shaking of his father's chest, one of his eyes peeped open, and then squeezed shut tightly when he saw his grandfather's frown.

"Let's go upstairs, Draco. Let's put him to bed now, and we'll have a drink."

"That's ok. I'd rather keep looking out."

"He should be in his bed. Come on."

Draco resigned himself to the command and turned to follow Lucius's somewhat robotic steps. When they got upstairs, Lucius watched from the doorway of Draco's childhood bedroom as Scorpius was returned to the rumpled bed, tucked in, and kissed. Once Draco came away and shut the door behind him, Lucius turned, heading for his study, but a hand grabbed at his wrist. He turned back, and within an instant, Draco had wrapped his arms around him, already crying.

They did get to the study eventually, and Lucius sat next to his son on the battered leather sofa there, conjuring a glass of water before anything else.

"Is she that sick, Draco? Do we need to do something tonight?"

Draco shook his head. He was hunched over his knees, one hand shielding his face from his father.

"I just didn't…I never wanted it to be like this. I know it's childish to say that, but life wasn't supposed to be…"

"It is not childish, Draco, to not want your wife to die."

He started to nod, but his sobs redoubled and he bent fully forward, clutching at himself. All Lucius could do, having never been the parent responsible for this sort of comforting, was place a hand on his back and wait.

When Draco's breathing slowed again, he dared to take another stab at some sort of wisdom.

"Your mother had a miscarriage before you. It was awful and bloody and I – I was wrecked. I even cried in the tea room at St. Mungo's."

That seemed to shake Draco enough to get him to lift his head and wipe his nose. "I had no idea."

"It never seemed like anything to worry you with."

"It must have been horrible, though."

"It was horrible, and I think it goes without saying it did not fall the hardest on me, either. Especially when conceiving you didn't turn out to be easy. There was a period of time – Merlin, years, maybe – when I didn't know if she would still have me. I was doing everything I could to be gentle with her and I never cared…well, I did care. It would be a lie to say I didn't want children. Her children only, though, and if we couldn't have that I would put it all behind us."

Lucius didn't really know the moral of this story. It simply seemed like the only remotely sympathetic thing he could bring up, and if nothing else it did seem to be calming Draco down.

"She said something to me once, when you were in prison. I told her to leave you. I was so upset and I wanted us both to get away. She said she tried once."

"Yes, she did. I still don't really understand what the point of it was in her mind, but I think it was mostly about protecting me, somehow. Not letting me take on the "burden" of her. Of course, it almost killed me, and I never saw any evidence she gained any joy from it."

"I said that to her like it would have been so easy…I didn't know…"

He leaned back into his father, tears coming again.


Narcissa woke just after dawn to find her husband sitting awake in bed.

"What's the matter? You look exhausted."

"I didn't sleep at all."

"You should have woken me."

"No." He held out a hand on the comforter and she, still laying down on her side, unearthed a hand from the bedding to take it. "We are so lucky, Narcissa." His voice was low, raspy. "Just…our marriage. Each other."

"I know, Lucius. But you can't have stayed up all night thinking about that."

He eyed her without moving his head, considering if he had made an implicit vow of secrecy with Draco or not. Not, he decided. "I stayed up until very late with our son, who bawled his eyes out until he fell asleep on the couch. I did my best to make him comfortable there, and in a minute I'll go wake him up before his family misses him."

Narcissa buried her face in his side, and his other hand fell to the top of her head.

"Do you think he regrets marrying her?" she asked after a moment.

"Oh no. I think he regrets being powerless, and I have no cure to offer for that."


Draco was awakened by his father and an elf with a tea tray not long after that, but it was still too late to pretend he had slept in his bed. Astoria was sitting at their little breakfast table when he went into their apartment of rooms, and she smiled at him as he went to her side and kissed her.

"I feel so much better this morning," she told him in a clear, bright voice. "I'm sorry about dinner last night, I don't know what kind of spell came over me…I hope you weren't working all night."

"No, nothing like that. I just fell asleep on the sofa after getting Scorp down. It was a little bit of a process."

"He's still sound asleep now. Why don't you go put on your pajamas and get back into bed? And maybe later we can do something together. I really do think I'll be stronger today."

Draco reached out for her hand as he pulled out the chair next to hers and sat down. "No. I'll eat with you."


I've written notes for this chapter and an afterword for everything nextttt -