[one-shots]: The Villain of the Piece, R
Title: The Villain of the Piece
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, also Harry/Ginny, Draco/Astoria, Draco/other male characters, Astoria/Parvati Patil.
Rating: R
Warnings: Sex (het, slash, femmeslash), voyeurism, infidelity, angst, Astoria POV and kind of weirdly epilogue-compliant.
Wordcount: 6800
Summary: Astoria didn't care that Draco took other lovers; after all, she did herself, and their marriage remained strong. But she did care that he was breaking the rules. And if he needed to cast her as the villain of the piece to learn his lesson, she was willing to play that role.
Author's Notes: This is not a romantic fic, and the infidelity and the other pairings are a fairly serious part of it. Don't read if that's not your cup of tea.
The Villain of the Piece
The first time Astoria came upon her husband and Harry Potter fucking, she felt no surprise. She supposed that she should have expected it.
She was surprised that Draco was crying as loudly as he was, though. When they lay together, Draco had a habit of biting down on his lip and turning head away. Astoria supposed it was to muffle such cries as this.
She stood silently in the doorway, watching as Potter's buttocks flexed and he drove into Draco, his hands pinning Draco's wrists down, Draco arching up to meet him, and pondered whether it was a greater compliment for Draco to make those noises or to try and keep silent. At least, when he turned his head away and adopted an expression of pain, she wasn't getting flying spittle in the face.
Potter slumped down over Draco, shivering in exhaustion. His hand cupped Draco's jaw and traced up and down. Draco reached up to clasp Potter's wrist in turn, but his eyes stayed shut. Astoria snorted. This part was familiar. Draco had all the stamina she could wish for during the actual fucking, but afterwards he would usually fall asleep in seconds.
Potter started and whipped around to face her, one hand on his wand. Or, well, the part of his anatomy where his wand presumably would have rested if he was clothed. Astoria nodded to him and strolled through the bedroom to the closet in search of the robe she'd come here for. She wouldn't have bothered, but Lalla Morningale's party was rather exclusive, and Astoria had taken some time and trouble to secure an invitation. Wearing the plain blue set of robes she had on at the moment, comfortable though they were, would have been taken as an insult.
"Draco--what the fuck--"
Astoria turned around and eyed Potter. For the first time, she had thought Draco had chosen a partner superior to himself in intelligence. Potter had to be smart to survive some of the things Dark wizards and the corrupted Ministry threw at him on a daily basis. But instead he babbled to Draco, who still hadn't opened his eyes, as if he were the relevant one in the conversation, instead of Astoria.
"It doesn't matter to me," Astoria assured him as she undid the buttons on her robes and stepped out of them. Potter turned his head away, blushing, although Astoria was still decorously clad in a shirt and shift underneath them. She cast several Refreshing Charms and then reached for the set of white robes she wanted to wear, admiring the way Potter's muscles flexed as he scrambled under the blankets. "I won't tell your wife."
"But you--you know," Potter said.
Astoria shook her head. "I always knew that Draco wasn't faithful to me, any more than I was faithful to him. The one with the greater cause for concern in this room is you, since I believe you have only the two lovers. You'll want to make sure that you cast iron-strong protection charms." She stepped into the robes, shivering in pleasure as the silky material brushed around her.
"You told me she didn't know," she heard Potter hissing to Draco, and tilted her head to watch them in the mirror set opposite her, in the bathroom door. Draco didn't respond, only lay there with his eyes closed and his hair fanned prettily around his head. He was good at that.
"I didn't know about you," Astoria said. "This is the first time I've seen you pass through our bed, yes. Welcome to the family." She adjusted the hang of her robes and began to button them, watching in amusement as Potter's face turned the color of an aubergine. "If it's such a problem for me to be here, then you can tell me when you plan on using a bedroom and I will time my visits more carefully," she added, turning around and casting another charm that made sure her blonde hair fell in neat, straight, shining waves past her collar and down her back.
"Draco's taken other lovers?" Potter still watched her with one eye and Draco with the other, as if he believed an attack would come at him but didn't know from which direction.
Astoria bowed slightly to him. "You have the essential fact right, but the verb tense wrong. He takes other lovers, yes." She moved past the bed, already wondering if Parvati would be at Lalla's party. She thought so, but they had neglected to make their usual arrangements. Parvati had said it might be more fun to have spontaneous meetings for a time, and Astoria, charmed by her lover coming up with something she hadn't thought of herself, had agreed.
"You told me I was the only one," Potter was growling to Draco as she left.
Astoria shook her head and adjusted the positioning of an emerald ring on the third finger of her right hand. The man cheats on his wife, with another married man, and assumes that that man will be faithful to him? It is more than ever obvious that Potter is not a pure-blood.
She couldn't help but have a dollop of sympathy for Potter, however. It was also obvious that he had fallen half in love with Draco's pretty face and Draco's pretty words and hadn't considered that they might be a porcelain masks over a void. At least Parvati had a personality.
*
"What a surprise."
Parvati said that with an iron-like smile and a hand that looked as if it was cramping as she took a glass of champagne from the tray in front of her. Astoria smiled at her and leaned back in her chair, so that she could watch the others at Morningale's party shift around and watch her. The party was being held in a large solar, with so many glass windows that Astoria hadn't yet located the charms and wards that kept the light from overwhelming and blinding the guests. It was subtle work, whatever it was. She admired Morningale's sense more than she had done so far.
"You could respond." Parvati said the words without quite moving her lips, and drank immediately after.
"I could." Astoria shifted her gaze to Parvati. She wore a dark gown, loosely gathered in at waist and shoulder and hip. Her dark hair hung, long and lovely as always, to the middle of her back. Her eyes were wide and distrustful. She'd added a bit of scarlet along their lids, enough to startle and arouse. Astoria smiled, and didn't care who watched. Half the room was full of gossips who would make up more lies than the truth because those were more exciting. "But I thought that would take away some of the sting of your righteous indignation." She rose and lowered her voice. "I think you enjoy that kind of sting more than you do the champagne."
Parvati shuddered and lowered her eyes. "I promised Padma that I wouldn't let you draw me in again," she said.
Astoria sighed and turned so that their gloved hands slithered briefly along each other's. She could see why Draco might have chosen Potter. There was a piquancy to teasing Gryffindors that didn't come from anything else Astoria had ever done or seen. But Parvati was also pure-blood, which meant that Astoria won out over her husband in points of pure taste. "Draw you into what?" she asked over her shoulder, as she picked up a drink of her own and smiled at Jacinta Greengrass, a decidedly poor relation. "A bed that leaves you gasping and satisfied? A liaison that no one else has ever picked out, mistaking it for pure friendship? The moment when you thrash under my tongue and--"
"Stop." Parvati's eyes were very wide, and she had the faintest tint of a blush to her earlobes. Astoria smiled at her. They were faint signs that anyone would have missed who didn't know her very well. Luckily, Astoria fit into that select group.
"It is your choice." Astoria tasted the wine. Sweet, if chilled for some inexplicable reason. "No one can make you do anything against your will." She bent close and exhaled on one of those blushing earlobes. "Except me. And then only because you beg me for it."
Parvati closed her eyes and turned her head away. Astoria stepped back, smiling into the distance, and moved around the room to greet her friends.
She knew that Parvati was watching her, not because she could feel the woman's eyes on her back or anything so juvenile, but because she knew Parvati, and after a speech like that, she would be able to look nowhere else.
*
"St-stop, Astoria--"
Parvati's pleas were never serious. Astoria kept right on licking, delving her tongue deep, reaching for the moment when Parvati's body would be strained to oversensitivity, and slamming that moment into reality, into Parvati's body, so that she would feel it, too.
Parvati came, her thighs tightening around Astoria's ears and muffling the noises of the world outside. Then her legs fell open and she lay there, softly gasping, staring up at the ceiling. Astoria rolled up and over, straddling her body so that she would have something appropriately beautiful to look at instead.
"Damn you, anyway," Parvati said, and closed her eyes. Astoria helped her move her trembling hand down between Astoria's legs.
It never took much to bring Astoria off, not when she'd been with Parvati like this and watched her squirm and struggle and finally surrender, her body burning all the while. Astoria's climaxes were quieter, more like a loosening of tension than the bolt of lightning that she knew they were for Parvati, but she could still enjoy the way her muscles were limp and her inner walls clenched down. She rolled over on top of Parvati when she was done, and trapped her hand between them until Parvati pulled it free with a noise of protest and reached for the bowl of steaming, scented water that Astoria always kept standing ready on a table beside the bed.
"I've never known someone who needs it as often as you do," Parvati muttered, splashing her face with the water. She wanted to hide the marks of passion, Astoria knew, her bitten lip and the paths of her tears. It never worked, but Astoria found it charming that she thought so. "Except your husband, if the rumors are true."
Astoria didn't say anything, but she was glad that she had rolled off Parvati and onto the stained sheets of the bed. That way, Parvati couldn't feel the way the tension returned to her and made her spine bow like that of a hunting cat.
"Is that so?" she asked casually, reaching out to take the bowl from Parvati and dribble a few drops on her own face. "I hadn't heard that."
Parvati rolled her eyes and turned her head over to look at Astoria again. She was trying to gain back some sense of detachment and coolness, but she had never been as good at that as she thought she was. That gorgeous dark skin of hers gave everything away, and so did her hair and the line of her shoulders and her eyelashes, for someone used to reading her. "You know," she said impatiently. "The ones that say he fucks someone new every third day. People are starting to notice."
"Oh, yes, those," Astoria said, and draped herself on the bed in such a way that Parvati had to pause and look, even though it was patently obvious from the way her eyes widened that she didn't want to. Every curve of breast and hip and waist and hair was for her, Astoria tried to say, while her concentration narrowed on the tip of her tongue. "I hadn't realized that anyone took them seriously. Draco is playing, in the way that any ill-disciplined young man does."
Parvati gave her the sort of secret smile that they'd shared from the first time they met properly, in the French Ministry, and which said that they knew things, as women, that men never would. Then her smile vanished. "Not in the way that any man does," she said. "I'm sure that Philippe never would."
Astoria shrugged. Philippe was Parvati's mysterious lover, but since Astoria had never met him and Parvati never seemed to spend any time with him, he might as well not have existed. "But not unusual among men of his age and social class in England," she said, and reached out to let her nails trail down the curve of Parvati's knee, pleased when she closed her eyes. "No one would pay attention to it if not for the potency of his family name."
Parvati's eyelids fluttered, and she reached out as if she would catch hold of Astoria's hand and either pull it close or thrust it away. Astoria waited, smiling, for either to happen, but Parvati started and gasped and pulled herself back to the conversation. "That's probably true," she said. "About his name, I mean. But people are talking more than usual. You must have heard them at Morningale's."
"Perhaps I would have paid attention," Astoria whispered, easing closer, "if not for your presence."
Parvati bristled as always, baring her canine teeth at Astoria like a wolf. "I wasn't taunting you--"
"Did I say that you were? Your presence, I said, not your words." Astoria leaned nearer and rolled Parvati's head aside on the pillow, bending so that she could bring her breath into play on Parvati's ear. "The scent you carry with you is enough to intoxicate me. A gesture distracts me. The way you curl your tongue when you're trying to pretend that you're not thinking about a sharp word said, when you want someone to think that you're brainless and useless--"
Parvati pulled her close again, and this time Astoria fell back beneath her, glad of it, glad of the way that Parvati's fingernails scraped over her and pinched her nipples and closed hard on her hips, glad of the way that Parvati practically foamed at the mouth as she bit down. It meant that Parvati wasn't thinking about what the rumors she had just mentioned.
But it left open a small space for Astoria to make a decision before Parvati overwhelmed her.
I must have a talk with Draco.
*
But that thought was misleading, as Astoria realized when she was sitting in the nursery, watching Scorpius play at her feet, and could think again. Draco would stare at the wall during any talk, and then stand up and announce that he had understood and would go and plague her no more. But that would only last until the next time he found a pretty piece of arse, or convinced one to follow him home, or told Astoria in a fit of the sulks that he had found another woman he wished he could have married, instead of her bony, skinny self.
Astoria could calculate the time of the month by the words he flung at her. It would be "skinny" and "bony" for a week, then "scrawny" for the few days when he was especially upset because she had kept him from pursuing someone married to a politician or spending his family's money on something extravagant and useless, then "rigid" as he tried to work his way back into her good graces, then "slender" when he had decided that he admired her and wanted to sleep with her again. And "dear wife" on those days, slightly less rare than blue moons, when he decided that he wanted to conceive another child with her.
Astoria willingly went to bed with him in those moods, but she always used the simple spell that killed his sperm the moment it entered her body. She had done as their agreement specified and borne a single child. Magic used during the pregnancy ensured that Scorpius left her body healthy, not a Squib, and a fit heir to the Malfoy bloodline. Astoria didn't know why all the families worried about having magical heirs didn't use such spells. It required a few months' intensive power drain from the mother, that was true, but that was a small price to pay for a lifetime of no worry, either from the child's failing health or small power, or desperate attempts to carry more of them to term.
"Mum?"
Astoria smiled at Scorpius. He was a beautiful child, with more personality at five years old than his father would have at fifty. "Yes?" she asked, bending down so that she would see more clearly the small toy he was carrying.
"How does this work?" Scorpius turned over the glistening, clear ball. As his hands moved across the surface, green sparks and red ones appeared, following his fingers. Random magic responding to the power it could sense sleeping in him, Astoria knew. These balls were toys, but also tests given to children to show their strength early on.
"It can feel the magic in you, dear one," Astoria said, and took up the ball in her own hands. The green and red sparks returned, but changed, forming into faithful images of fingers clasping her own from inside the ball, down to a golden shadow on the left one for her wedding ring. "And it feels mine. See?"
Scorpius frowned at her, small, intent. "But why?"
Astoria kissed his forehead. They might have produced a Ravenclaw, she and Draco, a thought that contented her, although it would be a blow to Draco's Slytherin pride.
"Magic permeates the world," she said. Scorpius opened his mouth, undoubtedly to ask what "permeates" meant, but Astoria went smoothly on. She had found that talking to Scorpius, really talking to him, meant that he would concentrate more on what she said as a whole and less on the meanings of individual words. She thought that mode of education most valuable. "It is like light. Can you see the light, or do you see the things that it lets you see?'
Scorpius thought about that for a minute, then said, "Well, both. There's the sun." He pointed out the nursery at the image of the setting sun that Astoria had enchanted the window to bear, so that her son would learn about colors. "And there's the things the sun lets me see." He turned and pointed at the carpets and other toys and paintings in the nursery.
"What did I tell you about pointing?" Astoria asked calmly.
"Sorry, Mum." Scorpius's hand and face both fell.
"Very good, you can see both," Astoria said, deciding that he needed a little praise after the implied scolding he'd received. "But which one do you see the most? When you see me cast a Lumos charm, what appears first, the light or the things that it lets you see? Where does the darkness go?"
Scorpius blinked. "I don't know," he said, after another minute or so of serious thought. "I thought the darkness was always there. Like the light. I mean, not your light, but the light that's...always there." He was faltering, Astoria knew, lacking some of the words and some of the thoughts for the things that he wanted to explain. That was all right. As he thought more and more about it, he would get used to it, and he would know some things as though they were imprinted in his bones. As long as those thoughts included pure-blood values, Astoria thought the practice valuable.
"Very good," she said. "Magic is like that. This toy is something that can pick up the magic the way that its surface reflects the light. Not everything can, but it can."
Scorpius stuck out his tongue slightly as he thought about that. Astoria raised an eyebrow and gestured with one elegant hand, and it disappeared back into his mouth as he swallowed. "Sorry," he said again. "But...why don't my other toys reflect magic?"
"They would, if they were made like this one." Astoria tossed the ball high and then neatly caught it, something that made Scorpius stare at her in wonder. He still had trouble doing that. "But they reflect magic in different ways. The dog that barks when you touch him? That's the magic in him responding to the magic in you. It's the way things are made. Your father and I made you, and we're both magical people, so you are, as well." Of course, there were Squibs and the intricacies of pure-blood magical breeding behind that, as well, but she thought Scorpius could wait to learn about those sorts of things.
"Oh." Scorpius picked up the ball and tore back to his play, tiring of the adult conversation the way he did at unpredictable intervals. Astoria leaned back in her chair and smiled, watching him.
She thought Potter had a son at his age, as well as one older and a younger daughter. Thoughts of that led her to thoughts of Draco again, and she sighed as the annoyance lapped through her like a cool wave.
She had hoped that he could control himself, and if others had been content to ignore his social indiscretions, she would have been. But they were not, and she had to speak to him.
For the sake of Scorpius's future and her own, not his. She had stopped caring about Draco's future long ago, since he was so determined to destroy it.
*
"What do you want?"
Astoria sighed as she slid into the seat across from Draco, glad that Scorpius was being fed by house-elves this morning. She would not have wanted him to listen to his father being crass. "Merely to speak to you," she said. "How discreet have you been with Potter? Is it likely that his wife could find out?"
Draco choked on the potion he was drinking. Astoria shook her head. He always had only liquid for breakfast, often potions to ease his headaches and other symptoms of the life he led, sometimes tea or coffee. She intended to see that Scorpius did not pick up that habit.
"We've been fucking for three months now," Draco said. "And why do you care? He's always discreet, to protect the little She-Weasel's delicate sensibilities, and it's not like she would get invited to the parties populated by your sort."
Astoria shrugged. "It's solely her own choice that keeps her out of them. She's pure-blood. She would be welcomed." And might be a nice choice to replace some of the others who are there. Except for Parvati's presence, Morningale's party had proven a disappointment. At least the photographs that the Prophet published, even those taken by people with no desire to flatter Potter, made the former Ginny Weasley look beautiful.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Draco banged the potion flask down on the table, but since it was empty, it made only a tinny clink instead of the satisfying thump he obviously wanted. He scowled. "With that hair?"
"Your family and the Blacks are the only ones with that ridiculous prejudice." Astoria leaned back as her breakfast, large chunks of carved ripe melon and berries, appeared on her plate. Her mother had always believed in beginning a strenuous day with something sweet, and Astoria had kept the habit. "If she takes care of her hair and it shines the way it does in the pictures, then no one else would care about it."
“You speak as though grooming can make up for an abundance of other personal faults.” Draco stabbed at one of her pears hard enough to make it skid around the bowl. Astoria offered it to him, and he turned away with a snarl. “Do you know how Weasley stinks, in bed and out of it? Potter has offered me intimate pictures.”
Astoria frowned. Another reason to be unhappy that Potter was fucking Draco. She kept her silence about her husband when in others’ beds, and he was supposed to do the same about her. “All I ask, Draco,” she said, “is that you exercise a bit of discretion. Don’t spread gossip about like that. Don’t give others a reason to spread it about you.”
Draco sneered and stood, taking the empty potions flask with him. He always threw them away on his own, as though he thought someone would use the dirty glass to poison him. Astoria had tried to reason with him about that, and been sent off with insults foul enough to nearly break her composure. Very well; he could act that childishly if he wanted to, and the house-elves would deal with it, rescuing and scrubbing the flasks that could still be used until they shone and Draco would never know he had drunk from them before. “I’ll do whatever I bloody well please, and you can’t stop me.”
He stalked away. Astoria contemplated her strawberries for a moment before she began to eat once more.
There was no getting around it. Draco had changed, and in ways that made it impossible for Astoria to ignore, to comfortably go along with the way they’d been going along with each other all these years. He would probably stop taking precautions against diseases as soon as that occurred to him. He didn’t care about giving Scorpius the protections against gossip that a traditional pure-blood upbringing, where both parents might have lovers on the sides but not advertise it, provided.
Scorpius would be going to Hogwarts in six years. Time enough for a load of gossip to build up and circulate.
Luckily, Astoria knew someone else she could go to about this.
*
“Mrs. Malfoy. Hello.”
Astoria smiled and slid into the seat beside Harry Potter. He was sitting on a Muggle park bench, staring up at the leaves that arched overhead as if he thought to find meaning in their green and golden colors. “Mr. Potter,” she said. She wouldn’t use the word “Auror” where a Muggle could overhear, though she knew the danger was small. That kind of elegance and grace was the sort of thing that only she was left in the family to teach her son, since Draco no longer cared for it. “I have news that I think you’ll find interesting.”
Potter narrowed his eyes. “If you intend to threaten me because of what you saw in Draco’s bedroom-”
Astoria refrained, but with difficulty, from snorting aloud. “I would never do such a stupid thing,” she said flatly. “Why? My husband knows what he’s doing, most of the time. I know that others share him.”
“Others?”
Astoria paused. Her tack had been to hint, delicately, that she would expose the affair to Potter’s wife, if Potter did not encourage Draco to more caution. But she saw a different tack she could take now, based on the fiery green smolder in Potter’s eyes.
“Oh, yes,” she said, with a careless wave of her hand. She leaned back against the bench and watched people pass them, towing dogs and children and burdens and regrets, as if they rather than her words occupied her. “It was Blaise at first, but Draco only makes pilgrimages to him once a year now. I think he found Blaise’s manner of lovemaking rather too rough for him. And then there was a man who admired his Potions-making-that one was Ryan, I believe. And Ferguson, whose first name I was never privileged to know. And that one wispy graceful blond he was fascinated with for months, though I believed that was when he had gone an unusually long period without looking in the mirror. And-”
“Are you trying to make me angry?”
Astoria felt the shimmer of magic against her skin, and knew that this was a dangerous man. No wonder Draco had wanted to date him. He was attracted to people who were greater than him, in every way. Astoria thought it was the reason he had ultimately chosen to marry her and not one of the several other candidates he could have had; she was the one who chose to refuse his proposal at first, and had to be flattered into compliance.
“Not so much that,” she said, “as introduce you to reality. Draco has and has had many lovers. He doesn’t always take the right precautions. Rumors could get back to your wife easily.”
“Will you tell her?”
And it was all there, for someone who could listen, laid flat in his words, for someone who had the ears to hear. All the history of his “love” affair with Draco, and the fact that his lovely little Weasley didn’t know, and the way he would hate for her to find out. Astoria had thought overpowering love had made Potter consent to this arrangement with Draco, but if that was true, it was still less strong than Potter’s desire for a normal life.
“Not I,” Astoria said, turning to look at him. “But rumors are circulating as to Draco’s activities. They could make their way back to her.”
“And you can’t control him?” Potter stared at her. Such lovely eyes, a pity about the rest of his face.
“He will ignore my advice simply to spite me, even when he knows it’s for the best,” Astoria said. “But if you could talk to him…”
Potter closed his eyes and sat there for a minute looking like an ice statue. Astoria had to admire his control. He wasn’t a pure-blood, and hadn’t practiced, but he might have passed muster with some of the less discerning people who had been at Morningale’s party.
“I can try talking to him,” Potter murmured. “But when Draco doesn’t want to hear something, then he doesn’t hear it.”
Astoria nodded. They had at least that much in common, then. “All I ask is that you try. There are other methods I would employ, but I would like to leave at least a small space open in how Draco and I relate, and the pretense of a happy married couple between us, for the sake of our son.”
Potter’s mouth twisted. Was he thinking of the children for whom he kept his deception of a marriage alive? Astoria surmised he must. He didn’t care enough about his wife not to sleep with someone else, after all.
Astoria could have respected someone who lived like she and Draco did, or someone who had agreed with his pure-blood bride that only one of them would. But Potter had chosen the guilty compromise instead, the one where he pretended that he had certain principles he wouldn’t violate, so violating some of them didn’t matter so much. If he did what he said he would, Astoria would respect him more, but it would not change the inevitable end of the affair: disillusionment with Draco or confrontation with his wife.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Potter said, and stood up and walked away from her, gathering a few curious glances from the Muggles, who seemed to have understood that they were husband and wife.
Astoria smiled back at a few of them, and saw one man blush. It made her wish that she was a better Legilimens, and that the Ministry did not keep such close track of those with the talent. She waited for several minutes to pass, in case one of those who kept track of Potter was watching her, and then stood and moved away with a calm tread, skirts swishing about her. That was the proper way for someone who had won an argument to move. She must remember to teach Scorpius about it.
*
“I know you interfered, Astoria!”
Astoria lowered the teacup from her lips and frowned at Draco. He had never before intruded into the nursery. It was an unwritten law between them, that Scorpius would be exempted from any fights they had. Now he was looking between the two of them, his brow bent down in a way that indicated he was thinking about other times she’d moved quickly or abruptly, or other times that his father’s cheeks had flushed.
“Will you tell me what you mean, Draco?” Astoria spoke more slowly and gently than usual in consequence, and moved around her son so that she could face her husband. “I don’t know.”
Draco seemed to recover himself then, or else remember where he was. He threw a quick glance at Scorpius, grunted, and turned away. “Come and speak with me, then,” he said, and crooked a finger towards the corridor outside the nursery.
Astoria did not enjoy being commanded in such a way. However, she reached down and let her hand trail over the top of her son’s head, keeping a calm expression on her face so that she could pretend it had been her own idea. “Think about that problem I explained to you,” she told him. “The one with negative numbers.”
Scorpius settled back in his small, elevated chair on the other side of the teatable, and his face wrinkled with thought. Astoria smiled and followed Draco. Someday, she would have to warn Scorpius about the possible dangers of adding lines to his face when he frowned like that, but not today.
When they got into the corridor, Draco turned towards her. His eyes were hotter with passion than Astoria thought her speech to Potter deserved. Potter would have said nothing that Astoria herself had not said multiple times.
Then Astoria heard a faint buzzing noise. She looked for the source of it, but Draco spoke, as if to cover it, before she could.
“Potter put a Fidele charm on me!” he hissed. “Do you know what that means?”
“I know the names of many spells, yes,” Astoria said, but she put a hand over her mouth to stifle her smile.
Draco saw her doing it, and his face turned the color of an angry plum. “He said that I might sleep with him and you, but no one else! What right did he have?”
“The right of someone who doesn’t exactly understand the customs of our social circles,” Astoria said, shaking her head. “I thought you unwise in choosing a lover who came from outside them, but that choice was your own.” She looked down, and finally saw what she’d been searching for. Around Draco’s right wrist was a slender silver bracelet, set with what looked like small pearls. It was the visible sign of the Fidele charm, and meant Draco would be impotent with anyone except the lovers chosen by the spell’s caster. It buzzed again as she looked at it, in recognition. Astoria smiled and turned to her husband.
“Just as his choice was his, to act in accordance with his nature,” she finished.
“He never would have thought of it if you hadn’t told him!” Draco pointed a finger at her.
“No, he would have found out about the rumors eventually and done something,” Astoria corrected him. “I might have sped up the timing of Potter’s decision, but nothing else. He was upset at the thought that you might have other lovers besides me and him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Draco said, and his face reflected his voice as a shallow pool of water would reflect someone looking into it. “Why would he expect me to be faithful? I never promised him that I would.”
Astoria looked at him, and shook her head. Draco was beautiful. That was the reason so many people chose him, or didn’t choose him but fell into some shining fascination with him that could feel like choice. His eyes were sometimes blue, sometimes grey, sometimes the color of storms. His cheekbones and chin and forehead might form sharp, bitter angles by themselves, but together they could make one of the loveliest combinations Astoria had seen outside of fantasy. His hands were long, and slender, and perfect for curving around teacups and breasts and cocks, and his voice could be musical when he didn’t raise it. Instinctively, he often decided not to around those, like Potter, who might be influenced negatively by hearing his shrillness.
But he had so little to offer outside of that. He didn’t consider that other people might want something different from what he did, because he didn’t consider other people at all. He wouldn’t have demanded fidelity from a partner, because he could have so many until he tired of them, and so fidelity wasn’t important or was an outmoded custom.
Even then, though, Astoria thought, he has a special kind of stupidity. He knows that Potter makes his home among those influenced by that kind of outmoded custom.
“You should have thought more carefully before you selected Potter,” she said. “As it is, you have one beautiful, possessive man and your lawfully wedded wife as lovers. You’re not tied to only one bed or a person you can’t stand. Think about that before you complain.”
Draco’s eyelids drooped, his lashes sweeping over his cheeks. Astoria smiled at him and turned away. Draco had used that gesture on her when they were first married, and it had fooled her. For a week.
“Would you consider spending the night with me, Astoria?” His gentle, genteel, gentleman-like voice. He would always try it after he thought she had won. A night spent with her then was a victory.
“I thank you for the chance,” Astoria murmured, “but I already have plans.” She continued walking, and entered the nursery to find Scorpius still thinking about the maths problem she had handed him.
“I think the answer is two,” he said, looking up at her with a frown. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Did you look in any books or ask the house-elves for the answer?” Astoria asked, taking up her place on the other side of the tea-table.
He flushed. “That would be cheating.”
Astoria smiled at him. “Yes. You’re right. The answer is two.”
While Scorpius crowed and jumped about, Astoria watched him, compared him with memories of herself as a five-year-old, and thought, Or we might have produced a Gryffindor. Which would be interesting.
And amusing, to see Draco’s face change when he hears.
*
Astoria leaned back from her writing desk and shook the pain out of her wrists. When she told Draco that she already had plans that night, she had told the truth. It had taken a long time to write the perfect letter to Ginevra Potter, the former Ginny Weasley.
One that didn’t outright tell the truth, because Astoria would as soon live without the whinging. But one that would tilt the balance scales a little more in the direction of giving the woman a chance, and a choice.
One expressing admiration for her Quidditch journalism-which Astoria often did find the only sensible commentary on the subject-and asking if she had thought about attending some of the quieter parties Astoria frequented, filled with people who cared more about wit than blood status. One which noted sympathetically that passing most of her days at home or at Quidditch matches with three young children and no house-elves would be wearing on any woman, and wouldn’t she like to spend some time away?
All of these were things someone should have noticed. All of these were things someone should have done something about.
But the proper person hadn’t, and so Astoria would.
The letter didn’t say those things, of course. Astoria knew she wouldn’t have got away with them. But she could hint them, and did, and let the air around the letter breathe it out in the same way that a swamp could delicately exude a poisonous atmosphere.
Then she summoned her pearl-colored owl and watched it soar away with the letter, leaning an arm against the windowsill so she could watch the light of the setting sun.
From somewhere beneath came the sound of Scorpius chattering to himself as he played, the clanks of dishes as the house-elves washed up, the sounds of Draco losing himself on Potter’s cock.
Astoria stood alone among them, the only one who had fully chosen to be who and where she was and who understood the consequences of those choices.
With any luck, she would be able to teach her son to do the same.
And others, perhaps, she thought, before she stepped back and shut the window.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/394843.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, also Harry/Ginny, Draco/Astoria, Draco/other male characters, Astoria/Parvati Patil.
Rating: R
Warnings: Sex (het, slash, femmeslash), voyeurism, infidelity, angst, Astoria POV and kind of weirdly epilogue-compliant.
Wordcount: 6800
Summary: Astoria didn't care that Draco took other lovers; after all, she did herself, and their marriage remained strong. But she did care that he was breaking the rules. And if he needed to cast her as the villain of the piece to learn his lesson, she was willing to play that role.
Author's Notes: This is not a romantic fic, and the infidelity and the other pairings are a fairly serious part of it. Don't read if that's not your cup of tea.
The Villain of the Piece
The first time Astoria came upon her husband and Harry Potter fucking, she felt no surprise. She supposed that she should have expected it.
She was surprised that Draco was crying as loudly as he was, though. When they lay together, Draco had a habit of biting down on his lip and turning head away. Astoria supposed it was to muffle such cries as this.
She stood silently in the doorway, watching as Potter's buttocks flexed and he drove into Draco, his hands pinning Draco's wrists down, Draco arching up to meet him, and pondered whether it was a greater compliment for Draco to make those noises or to try and keep silent. At least, when he turned his head away and adopted an expression of pain, she wasn't getting flying spittle in the face.
Potter slumped down over Draco, shivering in exhaustion. His hand cupped Draco's jaw and traced up and down. Draco reached up to clasp Potter's wrist in turn, but his eyes stayed shut. Astoria snorted. This part was familiar. Draco had all the stamina she could wish for during the actual fucking, but afterwards he would usually fall asleep in seconds.
Potter started and whipped around to face her, one hand on his wand. Or, well, the part of his anatomy where his wand presumably would have rested if he was clothed. Astoria nodded to him and strolled through the bedroom to the closet in search of the robe she'd come here for. She wouldn't have bothered, but Lalla Morningale's party was rather exclusive, and Astoria had taken some time and trouble to secure an invitation. Wearing the plain blue set of robes she had on at the moment, comfortable though they were, would have been taken as an insult.
"Draco--what the fuck--"
Astoria turned around and eyed Potter. For the first time, she had thought Draco had chosen a partner superior to himself in intelligence. Potter had to be smart to survive some of the things Dark wizards and the corrupted Ministry threw at him on a daily basis. But instead he babbled to Draco, who still hadn't opened his eyes, as if he were the relevant one in the conversation, instead of Astoria.
"It doesn't matter to me," Astoria assured him as she undid the buttons on her robes and stepped out of them. Potter turned his head away, blushing, although Astoria was still decorously clad in a shirt and shift underneath them. She cast several Refreshing Charms and then reached for the set of white robes she wanted to wear, admiring the way Potter's muscles flexed as he scrambled under the blankets. "I won't tell your wife."
"But you--you know," Potter said.
Astoria shook her head. "I always knew that Draco wasn't faithful to me, any more than I was faithful to him. The one with the greater cause for concern in this room is you, since I believe you have only the two lovers. You'll want to make sure that you cast iron-strong protection charms." She stepped into the robes, shivering in pleasure as the silky material brushed around her.
"You told me she didn't know," she heard Potter hissing to Draco, and tilted her head to watch them in the mirror set opposite her, in the bathroom door. Draco didn't respond, only lay there with his eyes closed and his hair fanned prettily around his head. He was good at that.
"I didn't know about you," Astoria said. "This is the first time I've seen you pass through our bed, yes. Welcome to the family." She adjusted the hang of her robes and began to button them, watching in amusement as Potter's face turned the color of an aubergine. "If it's such a problem for me to be here, then you can tell me when you plan on using a bedroom and I will time my visits more carefully," she added, turning around and casting another charm that made sure her blonde hair fell in neat, straight, shining waves past her collar and down her back.
"Draco's taken other lovers?" Potter still watched her with one eye and Draco with the other, as if he believed an attack would come at him but didn't know from which direction.
Astoria bowed slightly to him. "You have the essential fact right, but the verb tense wrong. He takes other lovers, yes." She moved past the bed, already wondering if Parvati would be at Lalla's party. She thought so, but they had neglected to make their usual arrangements. Parvati had said it might be more fun to have spontaneous meetings for a time, and Astoria, charmed by her lover coming up with something she hadn't thought of herself, had agreed.
"You told me I was the only one," Potter was growling to Draco as she left.
Astoria shook her head and adjusted the positioning of an emerald ring on the third finger of her right hand. The man cheats on his wife, with another married man, and assumes that that man will be faithful to him? It is more than ever obvious that Potter is not a pure-blood.
She couldn't help but have a dollop of sympathy for Potter, however. It was also obvious that he had fallen half in love with Draco's pretty face and Draco's pretty words and hadn't considered that they might be a porcelain masks over a void. At least Parvati had a personality.
*
"What a surprise."
Parvati said that with an iron-like smile and a hand that looked as if it was cramping as she took a glass of champagne from the tray in front of her. Astoria smiled at her and leaned back in her chair, so that she could watch the others at Morningale's party shift around and watch her. The party was being held in a large solar, with so many glass windows that Astoria hadn't yet located the charms and wards that kept the light from overwhelming and blinding the guests. It was subtle work, whatever it was. She admired Morningale's sense more than she had done so far.
"You could respond." Parvati said the words without quite moving her lips, and drank immediately after.
"I could." Astoria shifted her gaze to Parvati. She wore a dark gown, loosely gathered in at waist and shoulder and hip. Her dark hair hung, long and lovely as always, to the middle of her back. Her eyes were wide and distrustful. She'd added a bit of scarlet along their lids, enough to startle and arouse. Astoria smiled, and didn't care who watched. Half the room was full of gossips who would make up more lies than the truth because those were more exciting. "But I thought that would take away some of the sting of your righteous indignation." She rose and lowered her voice. "I think you enjoy that kind of sting more than you do the champagne."
Parvati shuddered and lowered her eyes. "I promised Padma that I wouldn't let you draw me in again," she said.
Astoria sighed and turned so that their gloved hands slithered briefly along each other's. She could see why Draco might have chosen Potter. There was a piquancy to teasing Gryffindors that didn't come from anything else Astoria had ever done or seen. But Parvati was also pure-blood, which meant that Astoria won out over her husband in points of pure taste. "Draw you into what?" she asked over her shoulder, as she picked up a drink of her own and smiled at Jacinta Greengrass, a decidedly poor relation. "A bed that leaves you gasping and satisfied? A liaison that no one else has ever picked out, mistaking it for pure friendship? The moment when you thrash under my tongue and--"
"Stop." Parvati's eyes were very wide, and she had the faintest tint of a blush to her earlobes. Astoria smiled at her. They were faint signs that anyone would have missed who didn't know her very well. Luckily, Astoria fit into that select group.
"It is your choice." Astoria tasted the wine. Sweet, if chilled for some inexplicable reason. "No one can make you do anything against your will." She bent close and exhaled on one of those blushing earlobes. "Except me. And then only because you beg me for it."
Parvati closed her eyes and turned her head away. Astoria stepped back, smiling into the distance, and moved around the room to greet her friends.
She knew that Parvati was watching her, not because she could feel the woman's eyes on her back or anything so juvenile, but because she knew Parvati, and after a speech like that, she would be able to look nowhere else.
*
"St-stop, Astoria--"
Parvati's pleas were never serious. Astoria kept right on licking, delving her tongue deep, reaching for the moment when Parvati's body would be strained to oversensitivity, and slamming that moment into reality, into Parvati's body, so that she would feel it, too.
Parvati came, her thighs tightening around Astoria's ears and muffling the noises of the world outside. Then her legs fell open and she lay there, softly gasping, staring up at the ceiling. Astoria rolled up and over, straddling her body so that she would have something appropriately beautiful to look at instead.
"Damn you, anyway," Parvati said, and closed her eyes. Astoria helped her move her trembling hand down between Astoria's legs.
It never took much to bring Astoria off, not when she'd been with Parvati like this and watched her squirm and struggle and finally surrender, her body burning all the while. Astoria's climaxes were quieter, more like a loosening of tension than the bolt of lightning that she knew they were for Parvati, but she could still enjoy the way her muscles were limp and her inner walls clenched down. She rolled over on top of Parvati when she was done, and trapped her hand between them until Parvati pulled it free with a noise of protest and reached for the bowl of steaming, scented water that Astoria always kept standing ready on a table beside the bed.
"I've never known someone who needs it as often as you do," Parvati muttered, splashing her face with the water. She wanted to hide the marks of passion, Astoria knew, her bitten lip and the paths of her tears. It never worked, but Astoria found it charming that she thought so. "Except your husband, if the rumors are true."
Astoria didn't say anything, but she was glad that she had rolled off Parvati and onto the stained sheets of the bed. That way, Parvati couldn't feel the way the tension returned to her and made her spine bow like that of a hunting cat.
"Is that so?" she asked casually, reaching out to take the bowl from Parvati and dribble a few drops on her own face. "I hadn't heard that."
Parvati rolled her eyes and turned her head over to look at Astoria again. She was trying to gain back some sense of detachment and coolness, but she had never been as good at that as she thought she was. That gorgeous dark skin of hers gave everything away, and so did her hair and the line of her shoulders and her eyelashes, for someone used to reading her. "You know," she said impatiently. "The ones that say he fucks someone new every third day. People are starting to notice."
"Oh, yes, those," Astoria said, and draped herself on the bed in such a way that Parvati had to pause and look, even though it was patently obvious from the way her eyes widened that she didn't want to. Every curve of breast and hip and waist and hair was for her, Astoria tried to say, while her concentration narrowed on the tip of her tongue. "I hadn't realized that anyone took them seriously. Draco is playing, in the way that any ill-disciplined young man does."
Parvati gave her the sort of secret smile that they'd shared from the first time they met properly, in the French Ministry, and which said that they knew things, as women, that men never would. Then her smile vanished. "Not in the way that any man does," she said. "I'm sure that Philippe never would."
Astoria shrugged. Philippe was Parvati's mysterious lover, but since Astoria had never met him and Parvati never seemed to spend any time with him, he might as well not have existed. "But not unusual among men of his age and social class in England," she said, and reached out to let her nails trail down the curve of Parvati's knee, pleased when she closed her eyes. "No one would pay attention to it if not for the potency of his family name."
Parvati's eyelids fluttered, and she reached out as if she would catch hold of Astoria's hand and either pull it close or thrust it away. Astoria waited, smiling, for either to happen, but Parvati started and gasped and pulled herself back to the conversation. "That's probably true," she said. "About his name, I mean. But people are talking more than usual. You must have heard them at Morningale's."
"Perhaps I would have paid attention," Astoria whispered, easing closer, "if not for your presence."
Parvati bristled as always, baring her canine teeth at Astoria like a wolf. "I wasn't taunting you--"
"Did I say that you were? Your presence, I said, not your words." Astoria leaned nearer and rolled Parvati's head aside on the pillow, bending so that she could bring her breath into play on Parvati's ear. "The scent you carry with you is enough to intoxicate me. A gesture distracts me. The way you curl your tongue when you're trying to pretend that you're not thinking about a sharp word said, when you want someone to think that you're brainless and useless--"
Parvati pulled her close again, and this time Astoria fell back beneath her, glad of it, glad of the way that Parvati's fingernails scraped over her and pinched her nipples and closed hard on her hips, glad of the way that Parvati practically foamed at the mouth as she bit down. It meant that Parvati wasn't thinking about what the rumors she had just mentioned.
But it left open a small space for Astoria to make a decision before Parvati overwhelmed her.
I must have a talk with Draco.
*
But that thought was misleading, as Astoria realized when she was sitting in the nursery, watching Scorpius play at her feet, and could think again. Draco would stare at the wall during any talk, and then stand up and announce that he had understood and would go and plague her no more. But that would only last until the next time he found a pretty piece of arse, or convinced one to follow him home, or told Astoria in a fit of the sulks that he had found another woman he wished he could have married, instead of her bony, skinny self.
Astoria could calculate the time of the month by the words he flung at her. It would be "skinny" and "bony" for a week, then "scrawny" for the few days when he was especially upset because she had kept him from pursuing someone married to a politician or spending his family's money on something extravagant and useless, then "rigid" as he tried to work his way back into her good graces, then "slender" when he had decided that he admired her and wanted to sleep with her again. And "dear wife" on those days, slightly less rare than blue moons, when he decided that he wanted to conceive another child with her.
Astoria willingly went to bed with him in those moods, but she always used the simple spell that killed his sperm the moment it entered her body. She had done as their agreement specified and borne a single child. Magic used during the pregnancy ensured that Scorpius left her body healthy, not a Squib, and a fit heir to the Malfoy bloodline. Astoria didn't know why all the families worried about having magical heirs didn't use such spells. It required a few months' intensive power drain from the mother, that was true, but that was a small price to pay for a lifetime of no worry, either from the child's failing health or small power, or desperate attempts to carry more of them to term.
"Mum?"
Astoria smiled at Scorpius. He was a beautiful child, with more personality at five years old than his father would have at fifty. "Yes?" she asked, bending down so that she would see more clearly the small toy he was carrying.
"How does this work?" Scorpius turned over the glistening, clear ball. As his hands moved across the surface, green sparks and red ones appeared, following his fingers. Random magic responding to the power it could sense sleeping in him, Astoria knew. These balls were toys, but also tests given to children to show their strength early on.
"It can feel the magic in you, dear one," Astoria said, and took up the ball in her own hands. The green and red sparks returned, but changed, forming into faithful images of fingers clasping her own from inside the ball, down to a golden shadow on the left one for her wedding ring. "And it feels mine. See?"
Scorpius frowned at her, small, intent. "But why?"
Astoria kissed his forehead. They might have produced a Ravenclaw, she and Draco, a thought that contented her, although it would be a blow to Draco's Slytherin pride.
"Magic permeates the world," she said. Scorpius opened his mouth, undoubtedly to ask what "permeates" meant, but Astoria went smoothly on. She had found that talking to Scorpius, really talking to him, meant that he would concentrate more on what she said as a whole and less on the meanings of individual words. She thought that mode of education most valuable. "It is like light. Can you see the light, or do you see the things that it lets you see?'
Scorpius thought about that for a minute, then said, "Well, both. There's the sun." He pointed out the nursery at the image of the setting sun that Astoria had enchanted the window to bear, so that her son would learn about colors. "And there's the things the sun lets me see." He turned and pointed at the carpets and other toys and paintings in the nursery.
"What did I tell you about pointing?" Astoria asked calmly.
"Sorry, Mum." Scorpius's hand and face both fell.
"Very good, you can see both," Astoria said, deciding that he needed a little praise after the implied scolding he'd received. "But which one do you see the most? When you see me cast a Lumos charm, what appears first, the light or the things that it lets you see? Where does the darkness go?"
Scorpius blinked. "I don't know," he said, after another minute or so of serious thought. "I thought the darkness was always there. Like the light. I mean, not your light, but the light that's...always there." He was faltering, Astoria knew, lacking some of the words and some of the thoughts for the things that he wanted to explain. That was all right. As he thought more and more about it, he would get used to it, and he would know some things as though they were imprinted in his bones. As long as those thoughts included pure-blood values, Astoria thought the practice valuable.
"Very good," she said. "Magic is like that. This toy is something that can pick up the magic the way that its surface reflects the light. Not everything can, but it can."
Scorpius stuck out his tongue slightly as he thought about that. Astoria raised an eyebrow and gestured with one elegant hand, and it disappeared back into his mouth as he swallowed. "Sorry," he said again. "But...why don't my other toys reflect magic?"
"They would, if they were made like this one." Astoria tossed the ball high and then neatly caught it, something that made Scorpius stare at her in wonder. He still had trouble doing that. "But they reflect magic in different ways. The dog that barks when you touch him? That's the magic in him responding to the magic in you. It's the way things are made. Your father and I made you, and we're both magical people, so you are, as well." Of course, there were Squibs and the intricacies of pure-blood magical breeding behind that, as well, but she thought Scorpius could wait to learn about those sorts of things.
"Oh." Scorpius picked up the ball and tore back to his play, tiring of the adult conversation the way he did at unpredictable intervals. Astoria leaned back in her chair and smiled, watching him.
She thought Potter had a son at his age, as well as one older and a younger daughter. Thoughts of that led her to thoughts of Draco again, and she sighed as the annoyance lapped through her like a cool wave.
She had hoped that he could control himself, and if others had been content to ignore his social indiscretions, she would have been. But they were not, and she had to speak to him.
For the sake of Scorpius's future and her own, not his. She had stopped caring about Draco's future long ago, since he was so determined to destroy it.
*
"What do you want?"
Astoria sighed as she slid into the seat across from Draco, glad that Scorpius was being fed by house-elves this morning. She would not have wanted him to listen to his father being crass. "Merely to speak to you," she said. "How discreet have you been with Potter? Is it likely that his wife could find out?"
Draco choked on the potion he was drinking. Astoria shook her head. He always had only liquid for breakfast, often potions to ease his headaches and other symptoms of the life he led, sometimes tea or coffee. She intended to see that Scorpius did not pick up that habit.
"We've been fucking for three months now," Draco said. "And why do you care? He's always discreet, to protect the little She-Weasel's delicate sensibilities, and it's not like she would get invited to the parties populated by your sort."
Astoria shrugged. "It's solely her own choice that keeps her out of them. She's pure-blood. She would be welcomed." And might be a nice choice to replace some of the others who are there. Except for Parvati's presence, Morningale's party had proven a disappointment. At least the photographs that the Prophet published, even those taken by people with no desire to flatter Potter, made the former Ginny Weasley look beautiful.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Draco banged the potion flask down on the table, but since it was empty, it made only a tinny clink instead of the satisfying thump he obviously wanted. He scowled. "With that hair?"
"Your family and the Blacks are the only ones with that ridiculous prejudice." Astoria leaned back as her breakfast, large chunks of carved ripe melon and berries, appeared on her plate. Her mother had always believed in beginning a strenuous day with something sweet, and Astoria had kept the habit. "If she takes care of her hair and it shines the way it does in the pictures, then no one else would care about it."
“You speak as though grooming can make up for an abundance of other personal faults.” Draco stabbed at one of her pears hard enough to make it skid around the bowl. Astoria offered it to him, and he turned away with a snarl. “Do you know how Weasley stinks, in bed and out of it? Potter has offered me intimate pictures.”
Astoria frowned. Another reason to be unhappy that Potter was fucking Draco. She kept her silence about her husband when in others’ beds, and he was supposed to do the same about her. “All I ask, Draco,” she said, “is that you exercise a bit of discretion. Don’t spread gossip about like that. Don’t give others a reason to spread it about you.”
Draco sneered and stood, taking the empty potions flask with him. He always threw them away on his own, as though he thought someone would use the dirty glass to poison him. Astoria had tried to reason with him about that, and been sent off with insults foul enough to nearly break her composure. Very well; he could act that childishly if he wanted to, and the house-elves would deal with it, rescuing and scrubbing the flasks that could still be used until they shone and Draco would never know he had drunk from them before. “I’ll do whatever I bloody well please, and you can’t stop me.”
He stalked away. Astoria contemplated her strawberries for a moment before she began to eat once more.
There was no getting around it. Draco had changed, and in ways that made it impossible for Astoria to ignore, to comfortably go along with the way they’d been going along with each other all these years. He would probably stop taking precautions against diseases as soon as that occurred to him. He didn’t care about giving Scorpius the protections against gossip that a traditional pure-blood upbringing, where both parents might have lovers on the sides but not advertise it, provided.
Scorpius would be going to Hogwarts in six years. Time enough for a load of gossip to build up and circulate.
Luckily, Astoria knew someone else she could go to about this.
*
“Mrs. Malfoy. Hello.”
Astoria smiled and slid into the seat beside Harry Potter. He was sitting on a Muggle park bench, staring up at the leaves that arched overhead as if he thought to find meaning in their green and golden colors. “Mr. Potter,” she said. She wouldn’t use the word “Auror” where a Muggle could overhear, though she knew the danger was small. That kind of elegance and grace was the sort of thing that only she was left in the family to teach her son, since Draco no longer cared for it. “I have news that I think you’ll find interesting.”
Potter narrowed his eyes. “If you intend to threaten me because of what you saw in Draco’s bedroom-”
Astoria refrained, but with difficulty, from snorting aloud. “I would never do such a stupid thing,” she said flatly. “Why? My husband knows what he’s doing, most of the time. I know that others share him.”
“Others?”
Astoria paused. Her tack had been to hint, delicately, that she would expose the affair to Potter’s wife, if Potter did not encourage Draco to more caution. But she saw a different tack she could take now, based on the fiery green smolder in Potter’s eyes.
“Oh, yes,” she said, with a careless wave of her hand. She leaned back against the bench and watched people pass them, towing dogs and children and burdens and regrets, as if they rather than her words occupied her. “It was Blaise at first, but Draco only makes pilgrimages to him once a year now. I think he found Blaise’s manner of lovemaking rather too rough for him. And then there was a man who admired his Potions-making-that one was Ryan, I believe. And Ferguson, whose first name I was never privileged to know. And that one wispy graceful blond he was fascinated with for months, though I believed that was when he had gone an unusually long period without looking in the mirror. And-”
“Are you trying to make me angry?”
Astoria felt the shimmer of magic against her skin, and knew that this was a dangerous man. No wonder Draco had wanted to date him. He was attracted to people who were greater than him, in every way. Astoria thought it was the reason he had ultimately chosen to marry her and not one of the several other candidates he could have had; she was the one who chose to refuse his proposal at first, and had to be flattered into compliance.
“Not so much that,” she said, “as introduce you to reality. Draco has and has had many lovers. He doesn’t always take the right precautions. Rumors could get back to your wife easily.”
“Will you tell her?”
And it was all there, for someone who could listen, laid flat in his words, for someone who had the ears to hear. All the history of his “love” affair with Draco, and the fact that his lovely little Weasley didn’t know, and the way he would hate for her to find out. Astoria had thought overpowering love had made Potter consent to this arrangement with Draco, but if that was true, it was still less strong than Potter’s desire for a normal life.
“Not I,” Astoria said, turning to look at him. “But rumors are circulating as to Draco’s activities. They could make their way back to her.”
“And you can’t control him?” Potter stared at her. Such lovely eyes, a pity about the rest of his face.
“He will ignore my advice simply to spite me, even when he knows it’s for the best,” Astoria said. “But if you could talk to him…”
Potter closed his eyes and sat there for a minute looking like an ice statue. Astoria had to admire his control. He wasn’t a pure-blood, and hadn’t practiced, but he might have passed muster with some of the less discerning people who had been at Morningale’s party.
“I can try talking to him,” Potter murmured. “But when Draco doesn’t want to hear something, then he doesn’t hear it.”
Astoria nodded. They had at least that much in common, then. “All I ask is that you try. There are other methods I would employ, but I would like to leave at least a small space open in how Draco and I relate, and the pretense of a happy married couple between us, for the sake of our son.”
Potter’s mouth twisted. Was he thinking of the children for whom he kept his deception of a marriage alive? Astoria surmised he must. He didn’t care enough about his wife not to sleep with someone else, after all.
Astoria could have respected someone who lived like she and Draco did, or someone who had agreed with his pure-blood bride that only one of them would. But Potter had chosen the guilty compromise instead, the one where he pretended that he had certain principles he wouldn’t violate, so violating some of them didn’t matter so much. If he did what he said he would, Astoria would respect him more, but it would not change the inevitable end of the affair: disillusionment with Draco or confrontation with his wife.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Potter said, and stood up and walked away from her, gathering a few curious glances from the Muggles, who seemed to have understood that they were husband and wife.
Astoria smiled back at a few of them, and saw one man blush. It made her wish that she was a better Legilimens, and that the Ministry did not keep such close track of those with the talent. She waited for several minutes to pass, in case one of those who kept track of Potter was watching her, and then stood and moved away with a calm tread, skirts swishing about her. That was the proper way for someone who had won an argument to move. She must remember to teach Scorpius about it.
*
“I know you interfered, Astoria!”
Astoria lowered the teacup from her lips and frowned at Draco. He had never before intruded into the nursery. It was an unwritten law between them, that Scorpius would be exempted from any fights they had. Now he was looking between the two of them, his brow bent down in a way that indicated he was thinking about other times she’d moved quickly or abruptly, or other times that his father’s cheeks had flushed.
“Will you tell me what you mean, Draco?” Astoria spoke more slowly and gently than usual in consequence, and moved around her son so that she could face her husband. “I don’t know.”
Draco seemed to recover himself then, or else remember where he was. He threw a quick glance at Scorpius, grunted, and turned away. “Come and speak with me, then,” he said, and crooked a finger towards the corridor outside the nursery.
Astoria did not enjoy being commanded in such a way. However, she reached down and let her hand trail over the top of her son’s head, keeping a calm expression on her face so that she could pretend it had been her own idea. “Think about that problem I explained to you,” she told him. “The one with negative numbers.”
Scorpius settled back in his small, elevated chair on the other side of the teatable, and his face wrinkled with thought. Astoria smiled and followed Draco. Someday, she would have to warn Scorpius about the possible dangers of adding lines to his face when he frowned like that, but not today.
When they got into the corridor, Draco turned towards her. His eyes were hotter with passion than Astoria thought her speech to Potter deserved. Potter would have said nothing that Astoria herself had not said multiple times.
Then Astoria heard a faint buzzing noise. She looked for the source of it, but Draco spoke, as if to cover it, before she could.
“Potter put a Fidele charm on me!” he hissed. “Do you know what that means?”
“I know the names of many spells, yes,” Astoria said, but she put a hand over her mouth to stifle her smile.
Draco saw her doing it, and his face turned the color of an angry plum. “He said that I might sleep with him and you, but no one else! What right did he have?”
“The right of someone who doesn’t exactly understand the customs of our social circles,” Astoria said, shaking her head. “I thought you unwise in choosing a lover who came from outside them, but that choice was your own.” She looked down, and finally saw what she’d been searching for. Around Draco’s right wrist was a slender silver bracelet, set with what looked like small pearls. It was the visible sign of the Fidele charm, and meant Draco would be impotent with anyone except the lovers chosen by the spell’s caster. It buzzed again as she looked at it, in recognition. Astoria smiled and turned to her husband.
“Just as his choice was his, to act in accordance with his nature,” she finished.
“He never would have thought of it if you hadn’t told him!” Draco pointed a finger at her.
“No, he would have found out about the rumors eventually and done something,” Astoria corrected him. “I might have sped up the timing of Potter’s decision, but nothing else. He was upset at the thought that you might have other lovers besides me and him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Draco said, and his face reflected his voice as a shallow pool of water would reflect someone looking into it. “Why would he expect me to be faithful? I never promised him that I would.”
Astoria looked at him, and shook her head. Draco was beautiful. That was the reason so many people chose him, or didn’t choose him but fell into some shining fascination with him that could feel like choice. His eyes were sometimes blue, sometimes grey, sometimes the color of storms. His cheekbones and chin and forehead might form sharp, bitter angles by themselves, but together they could make one of the loveliest combinations Astoria had seen outside of fantasy. His hands were long, and slender, and perfect for curving around teacups and breasts and cocks, and his voice could be musical when he didn’t raise it. Instinctively, he often decided not to around those, like Potter, who might be influenced negatively by hearing his shrillness.
But he had so little to offer outside of that. He didn’t consider that other people might want something different from what he did, because he didn’t consider other people at all. He wouldn’t have demanded fidelity from a partner, because he could have so many until he tired of them, and so fidelity wasn’t important or was an outmoded custom.
Even then, though, Astoria thought, he has a special kind of stupidity. He knows that Potter makes his home among those influenced by that kind of outmoded custom.
“You should have thought more carefully before you selected Potter,” she said. “As it is, you have one beautiful, possessive man and your lawfully wedded wife as lovers. You’re not tied to only one bed or a person you can’t stand. Think about that before you complain.”
Draco’s eyelids drooped, his lashes sweeping over his cheeks. Astoria smiled at him and turned away. Draco had used that gesture on her when they were first married, and it had fooled her. For a week.
“Would you consider spending the night with me, Astoria?” His gentle, genteel, gentleman-like voice. He would always try it after he thought she had won. A night spent with her then was a victory.
“I thank you for the chance,” Astoria murmured, “but I already have plans.” She continued walking, and entered the nursery to find Scorpius still thinking about the maths problem she had handed him.
“I think the answer is two,” he said, looking up at her with a frown. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Did you look in any books or ask the house-elves for the answer?” Astoria asked, taking up her place on the other side of the tea-table.
He flushed. “That would be cheating.”
Astoria smiled at him. “Yes. You’re right. The answer is two.”
While Scorpius crowed and jumped about, Astoria watched him, compared him with memories of herself as a five-year-old, and thought, Or we might have produced a Gryffindor. Which would be interesting.
And amusing, to see Draco’s face change when he hears.
*
Astoria leaned back from her writing desk and shook the pain out of her wrists. When she told Draco that she already had plans that night, she had told the truth. It had taken a long time to write the perfect letter to Ginevra Potter, the former Ginny Weasley.
One that didn’t outright tell the truth, because Astoria would as soon live without the whinging. But one that would tilt the balance scales a little more in the direction of giving the woman a chance, and a choice.
One expressing admiration for her Quidditch journalism-which Astoria often did find the only sensible commentary on the subject-and asking if she had thought about attending some of the quieter parties Astoria frequented, filled with people who cared more about wit than blood status. One which noted sympathetically that passing most of her days at home or at Quidditch matches with three young children and no house-elves would be wearing on any woman, and wouldn’t she like to spend some time away?
All of these were things someone should have noticed. All of these were things someone should have done something about.
But the proper person hadn’t, and so Astoria would.
The letter didn’t say those things, of course. Astoria knew she wouldn’t have got away with them. But she could hint them, and did, and let the air around the letter breathe it out in the same way that a swamp could delicately exude a poisonous atmosphere.
Then she summoned her pearl-colored owl and watched it soar away with the letter, leaning an arm against the windowsill so she could watch the light of the setting sun.
From somewhere beneath came the sound of Scorpius chattering to himself as he played, the clanks of dishes as the house-elves washed up, the sounds of Draco losing himself on Potter’s cock.
Astoria stood alone among them, the only one who had fully chosen to be who and where she was and who understood the consequences of those choices.
With any luck, she would be able to teach her son to do the same.
And others, perhaps, she thought, before she stepped back and shut the window.
The End.
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