home again [astoria]

monday, 17th may 2004 | malfoy manor, wiltshire

The grand double doors opened as the blond wizard approached, as if they recognised him (they did), then with a heavy noise closed behind him once he was inside, shutting out the soft evening light that had stretched across the tiles, casting a long shadow. His shoes echoed as he crossed the floor of the entrance hall, cavernous and empty. He poked his head into the library, undoing the buttons of his robes to slip out of them; not finding what he was looking for, he stepped back into the hall, down the corridor, to the kitchen.

The small (ordinary sized, but small compared to the grand front entrance) plain back door that led out to the kitchen garden was open, the breeze softly flowing through. Astoria would be outside, then, which he had suspected anyway but it didn’t hurt to check the library on his way through in case she was feeling unwell. Since the temperature had warmed and the nights had grown lighter Astoria had taken to spending the evenings outdoors whenever the weather allowed. They would eat al fresco, as she called it, and enjoy the fresh air — an aid to her illness. Draco stopped to drape his robes over a chair, then moved to pour a glass of water from the butler’s sink, magicking some ice cubes into it with a flick of his wand.

Astoria rested back on her heels and looked up in time to notice him approaching down the garden path; she beckoned him to her (as if he wasn’t already seeking her out) and Draco smiled, obliging; he unbuttoned his collar with one hand as he meandered between the wildflowers and less-structured shrubbery that had replaced boxed hedges and topiary, crushed gravel crunching underfoot. Two monarch butterflies cut across his track, fluttering together in front of him before continuing on to the large summer lilac bush that peered over the brick wall separating this garden from the next. Draco halted momentarily to watch them, then to listen to the rustling of leaves and twittering of birds — a far cry from the deathly silence that had hung over the manor and grounds during the Dark Lord’s tenure here.

Draco extended a hand to his wife as he reached her, ready to help her to her feet — Astoria took it, but tugged softly to indicate her desire for him to join her. He met her eye, withholding a sigh, and passed the glass for her to take. The wizard hitched his trousers up a little for some slack and lowered to his knees beside her, adjusting around to sit cross legged, wiping his hands against one another to free them of any dirt acquired in the process.

He caught Astoria grinning at him and smiled automatically in response, leaning towards her for a quick kiss ‘hello’. “I hope you haven’t been out here all day,” he commented, concerned that she wasn’t resting adequately — he hadn’t missed the presence of several new plantings, a number of freshly cleared beds. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, as the muggles say.”


@Astoria Malfoy

Humming to herself, Astoria shucked her long cotton skirt up over her knees and picked up her trowel again to dig a few centimeters deeper into the dirt; it needed to be twice as deep as the daffodil bulb was tall, or so she had read. She was nearly there, but it hadn’t rained in a few days and so the earth was harder-packed and thus tougher to break through than usual.

She’d always been fond of flowers and greenery; Draco knew this, which had made his surreptitious efforts to revive the garden (and subsequently his proposal) that much lovelier. He had propositioned hiring a professional gardener in the aftermath, as it was quite a large plot of land, but Astoria had insisted on learning and cultivating it herself. She didn’t quite know the first thing about the art of gardening itself until relatively recently, but it (in addition to plunging headfirst into philanthropic opportunities) had quickly become one of her favorite projects – and she rather felt she was catching on quickly. And whatever she couldn’t quite manage physically, there was always magic – or, sometimes, her husband.

‘There, that should about do it,’ she thought to herself, placing the bulb into its new home to confirm. Satisfied, she covered her new charge with the soil she had excavated, brushed her hands together lightly to clear any loose earth from her gardening gloves, and sat back on her heels to admire her work.

She glanced up at the crunching of shoes on gravel (though there was only one person she could be expecting), already smiling before she’d fully turned her head. Her hair was bound into a loose braid – though it was beginning to come loose and curl about her face, dampened by a thin sheen of sweat, despite being covered by a wide-brimmed hat with a blue sash to keep the sun off her face and neck.

“Welcome home,” she greeted, taking his proffered hand and tugging it gently, cuing him to join her. He hesitated a moment, but when he did oblige her she felt the familiar rush of affection for him. And he had brought her a drink (she thanked him with an even wider smile and a peck on the lips); he knew her too well, that she had become so absorbed in her task that she hadn’t thought to pause for a break.

“Not all day, no,” she told him with a sunny smile. “But most of it.”
Astoria laughed softly at his choice of quotation.
“Indeed, it was not… though perhaps those Romans did not have magic at their disposal.”
It hardly proved her point, though, as she had done perhaps ninety-five percent of today’s work without magic – but Draco didn’t know that.

“How was your day?”

Draco pressed his lips together in a line, unable to truly begrudge Astoria being outdoors and enjoying herself — but he did worry. If he didn’t think it would appear as though he had failed in his attempt to contribute to society he might’ve resigned from his Ministry position to work on the house and gardens with his wife, but he couldn’t risk it looking like that, and he thought she wouldn’t want him giving up something he enjoyed anyway — and he did enjoy his job, surprisingly.

Astoria countered that the Romans didn’t have magic, and Draco sighed. “Something you and the Romans have in common,” he said gently, gesturing vaguely at the muddy gardening tools scattered around her. He didn’t mean it nastily; he knew she liked to do things herself, but he also knew she forwent magic when she was feeling a little under the weather — he took a moment to observe her now, as if he might expect to see her cheerful smile flicker from the exertion. It didn’t, but he still wasn’t convinced.

“I shall have to start locking you indoors when I leave if you don’t promise to take a break,” he warned her, mostly in jest (there was some merit to the idea). He folded his hands together in his lap, taking in her efforts for the day as he backtracked to her query; his day had been much the same as the rest—such was the life of a government employee, he supposed—but the office had certainly been rather abuzz with talk of the Potter-Weasley baby — not the office he shared with Paula, she wasn’t that stupid, but the wider Department, of which Harry was also an employee.

He desperately didn’t want to dwell on his animosity for Harry Potter, but if he couldn’t vent at work... Astoria was all he had. Draco reached for the trowel and picked it up, spinning it over in his hands slowly. “Everyone was very excited about the Potter baby,” he rolled his eyes, sounding as far from excited about it as he possibly could. “You would think people would have realised by now that there’s nothing special about him,” he continued, taking the tool in one hand and digging the tip into the earth.