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There are some things even magic cannot cure.
This is a harsh truth Astoria Greengrass learned long ago. How long? For everyone else, it was perhaps nine or ten years; for her, that's perhaps twenty or thirty years since. Astoria’s body runs on its own clock, and it’s a clock that ticks fast.
Inside the large greenhouse where she grows valuable plants for sale, Astoria notes the time on her watch, puts away her tools, hangs up her big floppy sunhat, and makes her way home. The sun is beginning to set, and she pauses to enjoy the moment for one treasured minute.
Every minute is triply precious to Astoria Greengrass.
(“She’s probably made her peace with it,” someone says.
She’s at a party, one of the few she can attend, because her weakness forces her to ration social gatherings as carefully as she does the single glass of watered-down Riesling she allows herself. She’s surrounded by knots of young men and women who eye her furtively, knowing glances flickering amongst them screaming silently there’s the girl, you know, the one with the blood behind the carefully-phrased cheery-faced inquiries of her health. And that one unguarded too-loud whisper, after her back is turned.)
Astoria knows they say this more for their own peace of mind than for hers. It’s a pretty little lie, a comforting one, one that wraps a painful subject in a consolatory little bow. A little silver lining, around a cloud as black as death. She doesn’t blame them, not really. It’s just human nature, an emotional firewall against the twin terrors of truncated life and shattered dreams. They look at her and see not just a cautionary tale, but a future writ in tombstone, so they take refuge in well-meant platitudes, a self-defence against the little guilty voice deep inside that says “there but for the grace of God, go I”, because you can’t actually think that – although you do – and still call yourself a good person. So instead they say – she’s made her peace with it.
No, she doesn’t blame them, not anymore. How can you blame everyone for being human?
Astoria learned the cold hard reality of her life when she was just old enough to call herself a teen, when the first symptoms made themselves known and her parents tearfully broke the news to her; Astoria Greengrass, you were selected by the hand of fate and the curse of a long-dead utter bitch to live a short, painful life and then die at the ripe young age of forty. If you’re lucky, that is.
It’s the reality of having to grow up faster than everyone around you, because you’re going to die long before they do. It’s the reality of seeing that same subtle guilt taint the love not just in your parents’ eyes but also in your sister and erstwhile best friend Daphne’s, because she dodged the curse and she hates herself for it. It’s the reality of giving away all the hopes and dreams you so carefully treasured, not the ones of being a princess or a heroine, but the ones about growing up, doing a job you love, travelling to exciting new places, eating strange new food, falling in love with a good man, and raising happy sons and daughters and grand-children... the ones about being normal.
Reality is living a careful life in a fastidiously-cleaned home, eating a scrupulously-selected diet, drinking pints of potions every day, staying sheltered from summer and wrapped up in winter while the other kids go outside and play, and being nearly as good as a Healer at patching up the little cuts and bruises and breaks that crop up magically every day. Because you can bleed to death from one unhealed paper-cut; you can be fatally poisoned by the sting of a wasp or one over-ripe oyster; you can fall and hit your head and an aneurysm will end your brief unremarkable life in minutes.
And if you take care of yourself and avoid all these things and do those other things right, you may just live long enough to die at forty. Astoria Greengrass, this was your life.
No, that’s not something that you come to terms with just like that. Or ever.
The truth is that every day, Astoria makes her peace with herself anew – when she wakes up at the dawning of one more day of life; and again when she pauses for a tea-break and surveys the rows of blossoming and thriving plants in her beloved greenhouses, the gentle sun sparkling off dewy petals and leaves; and again when the light of her life comes home from the office and enfolds her in his strong, gentle arms; and once more when she falls asleep at night thinking this was one more day lived well.
Every day, every hour, Astoria does battle with her disease and with her demons, and wins all over again.
This state of being, such as it is, did not come easy. It was earned, over long years of pain and blood and tears and heartbreak.
Even now, there are some days when Astoria goes up to the attic of her neat, aseptic home – carefully Scourgifying the dust away – opens a battered old trunk, and runs her small pale hands over a hardly-used broom, a pristine practice Quaffle, hiking boots, a faded floral-print sarong, a child’s painting of a Healer in lime-green robes tending to happy patients – mementoes of a life before that terrible day she learned the real meaning of mortality.
(Astoria’s Quidditch dreams ended before they began, a Bludger strike could well kill her immediately; and her precariously-poised physique could never now support long hikes into the pristine wilderness. The tropics are filled with too many unfamiliar diseases for her to wander for hours and hours through incense-filled temples and bustling markets and monsoon-soaked cities; and her body could never keep up with the long stressful hours of a Healer on call. No, she sees St Mungo’s often enough now but from the other side of the coin that ten-year-old Astoria imagined, and isn’t that the biggest fucking twist in the tale?)
Those doors are closed to her forever.
But Astoria does all she can with the doors that remain to her. And from the broken threads that Fate has left her, she weaves a magic of her very own, to protect her heart from the magic that has cursed her body.
Her work done for the day, Astoria comes in from the greenhouses and showers carefully, washing away the sweat and dirt that might harbour unseen infection and death. With a stream of warm air from her wand, she blows dry her fragile papery skin and her mass of thick wavy dark-brown locks reaching halfway down her back (her greatest vanity). Astoria heals the least little bruise and scrape she finds with complicated fast-acting spells, and applies two types of lotions all over for further protection and health.
In the full-length mirror she inspects herself carefully, pleased with what she sees: a slightly too-thin, too-pale young woman, but fleshed enough and flushed enough to appear almost normal. (She’s worked hard for that almost normal, and takes pride in the fact.) She has small but well-formed breasts and a flat stomach overlaid with a healthy layer of flesh; Astoria remembers a time when she was gaunter and frailer, and is grateful for what she has now.
There are dozens of faint scars all over, fading with time; this too has become a point of pride. (The memories of pain they carry do not fade so easily, but now she has made of them reminders of what she has overcome.)
Astoria pulls on seafoam-green knickers and bra and a white frock patterned with vibrant red roses and forest-green leaves bursting with life. In the kitchen she cooks dinner; pan-seared salmon, crushed new potatoes dotted with rosemary, baby carrots, wilted spinach, and plain spring water. (When you have lived for months in a hospital gown, fed on porridge and boiled chicken-and-cabbage broth taken in bed, a simple meal prepared with your own hands is an experience to be cherished.)
As Astoria plates and serves, the Floo flares, and her husband is home.
Because really, there is actually a silver lining in this thunderhead of tears, though it’s not one that most people regard as such. (Again, irony abounds; what has become Astoria’s greatest joy and comfort draws only pity and derision from most.)
“My darling Draco,” greets Astoria, smiling widely.
“Sweetheart,” sighs her Draco, folding her into his arms and giving her the first of many kisses of the night.
Draco Malfoy. There’s another story in and of itself. Surviving the end of a war in which he fought for the absolutely wrong side began a complete change in Draco, and falling in love with Astoria completed it. Wizarding society was not kind to him (more because of fear of taint by association than out of strongly-held moral principles); it took a young woman who understood what it meant to be categorically spurned by society to give him a second chance at being a better man.
But that’s a tale that's his to tell.
Suffice to say, Astoria knows she has in him a diamond in the rough, and society and their whispers of “arrangements” and “scraps” and “gold-digging” can go hang. Astoria and Draco know what love is, and that is enough for these two damaged lives.
This is another magic they have made, together.
They eat, and Astoria savours every bite as if it was a meal fit for gods.
They talk, and Astoria listens and pours out her heart and soars on the sound of a harmonious meeting of minds.
(There’s more to say than speech can convey, and Astoria revels in every fond gaze and affectionate touch.)
Later that night they make love; carefully, tenderly, passionately; and with her head pillowed on his arm and the fingers of one hand linked in his, Astoria drifts off to sleep listening to two hearts beating in time and thinking this was one more glorious day lived well.
And whatever the future holds, she will always have this moment.
There are some things even magic cannot take away.
* * *
To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter, I know,
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.
- Emily Dickinson -