Chase This Light (PG)
Part I
"the beauty is in what isn't said"
Chase This Light
Draco Malfoy falls head over heels for Astoria Greengrass while he’s sneaking out of her engagement ball (in the most literal sense; he trips over her.) She’s sitting on the first of three stone steps leading out of the kitchen into the groomed back gardens of the MacMillan estate, elbows propped on her knees and chin in her hands, a fact he doesn’t notice until his foot settles down on something too soft and silk-slippery to be a stone step, too busy trying to dig a pack of cigarettes out of his cloak pocket to mind his path.
He scrapes his hand in the gravel at the foot and ruins his entire pack of cigarettes in a disastrous and inconveniently-placed puddle. It’s something of a small tragedy, in his opinion. And then there’s Astoria.
The moment is a ripped, shoe-scuffed dress, a few scolding, half-angry words that sound more like a conditioned response than any actual sentiment, and a bummed cigarette (“Those things are wretched for you anyway, Draco Malfoy, a completely disgusting habit…I’ve got an extra if you’ve got a light. They’re girly menthols, just to warn you.”) before it falls into an indifferent, occupied silence.
They are terribly girly cigarettes, too thin between his fingers, too fresh in his mouth, but the motion, the habit is enough. Astoria smokes hers with determination, looking with an almost cross-eyed intensity out over the MacMillan estate. The cinder-tipped cylinder in her hand is an anachronism to her elegant, old-fashioned robes, her dark brown hair pinned up in lacquered curls at least a hundred years out of modern fashion; the white paper is like a black oil smear on some pastel-shaded portrait. She looks like an old china doll, dressed in sage-green silk and thick dust, only twenty in years but rather ageless and inanimate in her sea-glass eyes; a doll in an attic with a quiet but nearly tangible sense of unhappiness in a cloud about her.
She’s about halfway through before she turns to him, exhaling the smoke before speaking with a half-smile. “Sneaking out of my ball, are you?” Her eyes meet his with an unusual intensity; she has a magnetic, pulling gaze even when she speaks so lightly.
“Sneaking out of your own ball, looks like,” he observes with a quick, meaningful glance at the door before turning his eyes back to hers.
“Ernie’s too busy to dance,” she says as though he asked why (he has the sudden, strange conviction that he did, without words, and she read it in his eyes). Astoria doesn’t sound particularly sad, or resigned, but rather matter-of-fact and there’s a song of arrogance in her voice, who would be too busy to dance with me?
He doesn’t realise until she’s left that most wouldn’t have stayed at all, much less shared any sort of a conversation that wasn’t dripping with disgust and condescension. Most would not have even looked him in the eye. For a minute, he’d forgotten that he’d been shown to a seat in a shadowy, undignified corner of the ballroom, that his conversation was limited to quiet words with his mother simply to keep up the show, that all the grace and respectability once woven into the Malfoy name has been unraveled and ground into the ashes of the war. He'd forgotten that no one met his eye, but rather glued their gaze upon his shirtsleeve as though the Dark Mark were about to burn through.
Draco doesn't leave like he intended to; there was something in the curl of her rose-pink smile as she toed the remains of her cigarette into the gravel. For his dignity, what little his family has left, he lingers by the kitchen door for a while before he follows her back into the ballroom.
It’s quite a grand party; the MacMillans are always good for a fuss. A lot of good looking girls flitter about the white marble floor in a rainbow flurry of dress robes. Their glances dart away, eyes sliding quickly sideways should they happen to fall into line with his. And then there’s a pair of cloudy-green eyes locked with his, and she’s smiling; with just that, the world, the life Draco thought he’d thrown away at seventeen settles back into place (it’s a bit rough in spots, not quite as he remembers, but the flaws make it beautifully real.)
The whole high table falls uncomfortably silent when he approaches and asks her to dance. MacMillan sputters admirably when Draco asks permission (his toes curl in distaste, but Narcissa Malfoy taught her son tradition), while Daphne, next to her younger sister, wrinkles her nose in suppressed mirth. Astoria's hand, small and white and aristocratically soft but for the wand callus on the curving joint of her first finger, is in his before anyone can summon polite, appropriate words to chase him off (if there are any, really).
Astoria comes alive in his arms, dust falling away from her stiff curls, her eyes, her smile. I’m not too busy, he tells her without words, locking his gaze with the only girl in the room who would dare look back, if you’re not too good.
The biggest scandal high wizarding society will see in 2002 begins in the two minutes Ernie MacMillan can manage to sit for the pretense of good will and good manners, before cutting in to reclaim his fiancée. Ernie meets his eyes for the first time and, even with the black fury in the man’s look, Draco rather relishes the contact.
He feels a like a man again; there’s someone looking him in the eye with jealousy, possession, challenge in his gaze. Someone's looking at him again like he's something more than dirt.
There’s a cool smile that spreads across his face as he looks down at Ernie, whose cheeks are blotchy pink with suppressed rage. Astoria is fading back into dust as Ernie’s hand grips her wrist, but her eyes are clear as she meets his for just a moment before he politely returns her to her fiancé, thanking the former Hufflepuff for the dance with his lovely bride-to-be.
Ernie grinds out some pleasantry completely voided by the hard look about his face, the challenge in his brown eyes and Draco smiles more broadly before congratulating the couple and returns to his seat next to his mother, watching Astoria’s sage-silk figure glide in and out of the waltz-timed hurricane. She finds him in his seat over and over again, the sea-glass green of her eyes matching up with his when the ocean of dancing people ebbs perfectly, clears a path between them. Her eyes light from behind in the short moments, and he's never wanted to chase anything so badly.
He laughs when he’s off the MacMillan property like he hasn’t laughed in years. Draco leaves them to celebrate an engagement that’s never going to end in a wedding, and laughs as a man who knows he’s already won the match.
Part one in a short series of Draco/Astoria one-shots. I've been working really hard on characterising Draco well, because he's one of the characters I have a hard time getting down just right, so please let me know what you think!
Title and header quote from Jimmy Eat World's fabulous album, Chase This Light, everything else from Ms. Rowling.