Chapter Text
When Astoria was born, the heavens cried. Mind you, she was born in August and the weeping was more of a summer rain than a winter storm. But the symbolism of it remained – the birth of a child destined for a brief life ought to be a bittersweet experience, no matter the season of the year.
Before she could genuinely understand the meaning of death, her mum was told it would come for her. A blood malediction, the healers had diagnosed – the same one that had taken away her grandma Briseida, at forty-two, and her uncle Leander, at thirty-five.
Astoria had not minded it much. Certainly, her mum’s cries upset her and so did the way her dad would look at her – vacant expression, somewhat akin to the manner one might look to a pet cow, while raising it for slaughter – but overall, the news about her impending death had not had much impact on her life. Thirty years seemed like a very distant time, to a child of five and, before that, her greatest fear had been living in a world without her parents to support her – so she had immediately recognised the silver lining to the idea she would most likely die before them.
It was not that she wanted to die, not even close, but as she got older, Astoria realised she did not fear death, not as most people did. The thing is, people are usually afraid of the unknown character in death, and she simply did not have it in order to be afraid. She had a vague idea when she would die (sometime after thirty, but before fifty), from what she would die (the curse, unless something killed her before), and she had a picture of death would come (thanks to the many her mum’s memories of her uncle and of her grandma she had watched on a Pensieve).
What Astoria was truly afraid of, was of not living. And she would be forever grateful for that fear and even to her ailment, for giving her a unique perspective on life. The aforementioned Pensieve, a gift from her parents for her sixth birthday, was the main responsible for such perspective. It was through it, that she learned to appreciate every tiny moment of her life, to bind them in her memory.
The colour of the sunset bathing the midlands as seen from her grandad’s manor, the swaying of the boats travelling down from Magdalene Bridge in the summer, the deers snorting on her hand in the College Park, the soft sound of the breeze caressing the grass in Port Meadow, the savoury taste of poppy seed scones baked freshly in The Grand Café. The sharp melody of her sister’s laughter, the mellowness in her mother’s voice as she sang them lullabies, the husky character in her father’s tone while he told them tales of a childhood in the country. The unforgettable echoes of her own privileged childhood.
Most of that merry period had been spent among Muggles, in the very centre of Oxford and yet, she had interacted very little with them due to her parents’ disregard. As a child, it had not bothered her too much – Muggles were just another oddity in the world, and there were just too many things to be seen, too little to be enjoyed in the time she had.
The truth about Astoria was that she would have happily led a simple life of hedonism – but even a simple life becomes a great ambition when dreamt by someone who was born with her days numbered. She was marked to be sorted in Slytherin by nothing else than the circumstances of her birth, and her sister would tease her endlessly for it.
The most unusual of the Slytherins, Daphne had named her, and it was probably true. Astoria had all traits the house prided: the ambition to enjoy everything in the little bit of life that remained her, the determination to see her curse through, the pride to be her own person outside of it, the self-preservation to not heighten the conditions that would eventually bring her to death. She did not particularly care for the social silliness most of the house seemed so invested in, but her sister’s presence amid their ranks had helped her to settle for sure.
It was fitting that the most irregular of the Slytherins might have studied in Hogwarts in the years that could be counted amongst the school’s oddest ones, at least in the modern era. They were also quite tragic, she gleaned, though Astoria could not wrap her mind around the idea of death as a tragedy.
Everyone told her she was too sheltered. It could be true – her parents had surely done their best to bring her happiness, her sister hers to prevent any suffering. They never asked her to study, to create or even to contribute in any form – everything she did, she was told to do for herself. It was not that she did not care for the world outside, it was just that she did not have enough in herself to mind the world’s business.
In her graduation, after the war and everything was well, when asked about what she intended to do in the future, her answer was the same as always:
To live to the fullest, and to die a quick death.
Indeed, that was her greatest ambition. So, she danced ballet and acted in drama, sang in the choir and played the piano. She only drank small portions of alcohol, unwilling to lose even one moment of her life to it, and she ate large portions of whatever she wished for. She slept just as much as her healer recommended, and never a minute more, and she did not waste any of her time in casual relationships, for every connection in her life ought to have meaning. Her romances were sweet, carefully built from the moment of her sister’s introduction – Daphne always introduced her to them, and she did not mind that most of the time. When those liaisons ended, she was always careful to leave them on good terms – mindful of how she would be remembered after her death.
Unchangingly Astoria felt like a hummingbird, forever flapping her wings in her ineffectual existence.
That changed when the first signs of spring breathed over the year ‘02. She had been engaged in flirtations with three other men at the time, neither of whom she was sleeping with. Astoria often did that – dating men without any purpose whatsoever, the most freeing of the balancing acts. She liked them best foreign (less history there) but she was not that picky – at the time, one of her pursuers had been a fellow countryman who dabbled into potions, Atticus Lowe, while also being pursued by basque duellist, Eurico Bergara, and a Wallachian historian, Nicolae Sinas. The first preferred the company of men and used her as a front for his traditional parents by her suggestion. The second had a fiancée carefully selected for him back home, so they could bever become serious. Nicolae, however, showed potential. He was quiet, but that did not mean he did not know how to enjoy life – he was not particularly handsome, but she had liked that crook in his nose. Indeed, she could see herself dating him for real, if she had not met her husband then.
Initially, Draco joined the ranks of suitors without ceremony. In the past, he had just what girls like her were supposed to pick for a husband – a great breeding, a good standing, and an education that matched all the other aspects. But Astoria was not one for conventional suitors, and he had only fallen into the unconventional category after his family’s fall into disgrace. The Malfoys still had some credit of course – centuries and centuries of good reputation took some time to crumble – but they were welcomed in fewer and fewer close circles every day.
He wore disgrace badly, though not as much as he had worn the Dark Mark – if the timeline portrayed on the trials was to be believed, and he was indeed one in her fourth year. But the gauntness in his cheeks, the hopelessness in his eyes were something that caught her eye like no other. Astoria herself had lived by the side of Death long enough to know when someone was toying with it.
There was a funny side to him, even if it could not be noticed at first glance. At school, she had disliked the jokes she had overheard coming out of his mouth, all of them imbued with meanness. These days, he had lost his quips and jokes, exchanging them for something sardonic, alternating between arrogant and self-deprecating.
He did enjoy life, and he knew most of what was needed to do so effectively. It was undoubtedly attractive, the ease he displayed no matter the circumstances. There were politics, but Astoria had very little interest in them. There were ideals, but she figured standing up for them would make her life rather unhappy, and not even a bit longer than it was supposed to last. Astoria craved for the non-being, the haze in which she could forget about her imminent death and enjoy everything the notion of being alive brought upon her. With Draco, her days were spent on the soft comfort of skin-deep touch, wasted on the idea of the barest evidence of life. He took her to many places and, though in her mind none of them was very different from each other, she enjoyed his enjoyment at them – the foreign idioms at her ears, a pantomime of her life, forever out-of-touch with reality.
Eventually, all her other suitors faded away, and they were left alone, dancing to songs the world was oblivious to. Fools pleased by their follies. He proposed to her at the end of the first act and, by the conclusion of the second, she had decided they ought to have someone else in their lives otherwise, one day, her husband would be left dancing on his own.
The only time Astoria ever wished for a little more time was when her son was born. She held him close to her chest, aware that she would not be around to see him have children of his own. It was sweet torture. It was fine – she had always known that.