Chase This Light, Part III
Part III
{can't keep safe what wants to break}
It’s the food of Witch Weekly’s gossip columnist for a solid three weeks; everyone’s waiting for the newly un-engaged Astoria Greengrass to be found in a compromising position in some dark corner of Knockturn with Draco Malfoy.
Ms. Greengrass has not so much fallen from grace as taken a headlong running leap into ignominy, should the reports of a romance with Draco Malfoy prove true, the newest wannabe Rita Skeeter writes in the oh-so-cleverly titled “DA to Death Eater?” One must wonder at her state of mind, or perhaps consider an inventory of the potion ingredients to be found in Malfoy Manor…
She wasn’t supposed to cry.
He’d waited an entire week to visit her, his pride all the while assuring him she’d be over soon enough, ready to leap into his arms and throw away the world. Impatience overtook pride soon enough, and he’d found himself at her father’s front door, being rather pointedly looked at in a vaguely threatening way by Astoria’s stepmother, a tiny little woman whose powers of intimidation were certainly not relative to size.
It’s all vaguely surreal and decidedly out of line with his plans (he’d imagined something along the lines of Astoria presenting herself to Malfoy Manor-or maybe arranging a middle-of-the-night theft of her from her childhood bed-the two of them running off to some exotic locale to marry, returning to England in a flurry of gossip too unimportant to touch them because they were Malfoys). He is in equal parts disturbed and elated by the speed with which his planned courting of Astoria is flying down the drain, out the window, just away.
She’s moping around her bedroom, wearing an oversized Montrose Magpies tee-shirt (that looks rather unsettlingly as though it once belonged to a male ‘someone else’) and no engagement ring. Her left hand looks inexplicably both bigger and lighter without it.
He proposes without words (none will really come to him, there’s absolutely nothing he is willing to tell her right now), with just his grandmother’s beautiful blue diamond, newly reset in platinum, held out to her. And she cries. Or laughs…something strange and harsh between the two.
She holds her arms out, palms out in a ‘look at me’ sort of gesture. “Are you serious?” is all she says, soft tears dripping down her quickly-pinking face while she chokes out something that sounds more like laughter than tears (it’s hard to tell).
He reddens, angry. “Well, why not?” he spits mulishly, drawing the ring back to him protectively (like she’s injured, insulted the ring-it’s easier to pretend that it’s the ring she’s rejecting and nothing else).
She looks at him, tears stemmed and sounds muted, complete disbelief on her face. “Yes, because I’m walking away from a promise I made to someone I loved once. I’m making a mess of my nice neat life for you, God knows why!”
“God knows why?” he fumes, both furious and very terribly afraid that she is about to run it all into the ground, send him away and never meet his eyes again and he’ll be just as he was and never worth anything to anyone.
She looks terribly confused and a little unhinged, cemented in her childhood room and still attached to what was, the familiar. Astoria is lost in this, and if he doesn’t catch her now, she’s going to drift out of reach.
With a moment of sunlit clarity, Draco Malfoy understands exactly why they did not kiss in that alleyway in Edinburgh: he desperately needs something extraordinary, right now, to save it all before she turns him out in shame.
There is no shame for a Malfoy, not like this. He stands there in his tailored robes and smirks at her in her tatty pyjamas (it’s all the show he has left) and puzzlement clouds her eyes, her head moves to look away but then the curve of her jaw is in his palm (he’s almost not gentle in his quiet, concealed desperation) and his mouth is on hers.
This is why.
He loves her.
He’s never kissed anyone before (not like this, not in any way that ever meant anything close to this, this is the beginning of the world). He’s ready to lay the world at her feet, to kneel himself alongside it because he is entirely unworthy of looking in her eyes; he’s in love in a hundred thousand ways that he will never ever tell her, because he will never know how to, because his heart will always be just a little too proud to translate love into words, into anything more than quiet, subtle action. Perhaps it's best Astoria reads everything in his eyes; they will always speak louder than any words he will ever speak.
It’s entirely without words, but Astoria’s spine curves under his hand, hands (ever-so-hesitant at first) curl around his arm, crumpling the immaculate fabric between her fingers.
He grins in smug victory when he pulls away and she follows for just the shortest of seconds before remembering herself. And then her eyes dart up to him, lovely green through short dark eyelashes and a grey smudge of leftover makeup, and the false smile fades from his mouth. Maybe he’s learning to read, because her eyes say, Oh, that’s why.
“You ask me nicely, next time,” she says softly, running her fingers down his arm (he shivers and tries not to pull away when she-unknowingly? unthinkingly?-brushes her fingers over his left forearm and what is so carefully bandaged underneath his sleeve) and taps the box in his hand.
“I’m Draco Malfoy,” he tries to crow, to sneer, but it all sort of falls down. “I don’t do nicely, didn’t you know?”
He’s expecting something quick and sharp and playful back from her, but she just half-smiles, her head tilting and her hand wandering up to play with the messy, half-hearted waves her long, un-brushed hair falls into. It’s casual, and Draco is once again struck with the fact that his words seem to mean less to her than what she reads so fluently in his eyes.
She steadies a hand on his shoulder and leans up to kiss his cheek. Then she sends him away.
When he does it again, there are no roses, no poetry, no words…nothing much at all. But Draco kneels before her (he hasn’t knelt since…a Malfoy should kneel only once in his life, only to one worthy of the name, he sees that now) and holds the ring up to her.
And Astoria takes the ring and throws her life, her name, her reputation, to the winds and smiles as she does it. He breaks her (or lets her break herself, maybe, but she would’ve lived unhappily on in her too-tight ceramic shell without him, a doll in a dusty attic) and she smiles as she redesigns herself, bright and real and he knows she always wanted to break, he just gave her a reason to.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed! It really is encouraging. And to those of you who haven't, please! If you've got just a little time to spare and you enjoyed this/found something you think could've been improved on, let me know! Suggestions are always welcome.
Also, my Kingsley fic, Worth Saving, got recced on Coffee-and-Chocolate, a HP recs site, which was rather exciting.