She || Drastoria

18 - The Bucket List

He loved the mornings when he would wake before her.

If they were at his (which was more often than not), he would often slip quietly out of bed, careful not to wake her and move over to the desk where he would slide a piece of parchment in front of him and begin to draw. His sleeping beauty, he would silently call her.

She snored. She would vehemently deny it in her waking hours, of course, even though he insisted it was adorable.

Which it was. He loved the way her nose would scrunch up as the gentle snores rattled softly at the back of her throat, reminding him of a rabbit.

He wondered what she would think if he bought her a rabbit, a pet they could share perhaps, hers and his.

It was this thought that led him to the idea of the list. A list that would prove to Astoria that he had accepted her fate and maybe throw her off the scent of what he was actually doing behind her back.

"You mean a bucket list?" Astoria scoffed when he proposed this idea to her one lazy Sunday morning in his bed. "A list of things people want to do before they die?"

Draco stilled, hating any kind of reference to her death. "I meant, just a list of things we can create of stuff to do together. I thought number one on the list could be get a rabbit."

"Why? Are you thinking of going into show business?"

"Astoria, can you take this seriously, please?" He muttered when she snorted into the pillow, laughing at her own terrible joke. "It doesn't have to be a rabbit, just something that can be ours to look after, maybe a hamster or a gerbil. Or even a cat."

"Not a dog?"

"If you want a dog then I'll get you a dog. Hell, I'll get you a fucking unicorn if that's what you really want."

She lifted her head, blinking up at him, her hair falling across her face and muffling her mouth so that she had to push it back behind her ear to speak.

"You're serious aren't you? About this list thing?"

He rolled his eyes, pushing a hand through his hair, causing it to fall messily back over his eyes. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. Now, am I putting a rabbit on this list, or a unicorn?"

A smile twitched at her lips making her eyes sparkle brightly up at him. It actually ached Draco's heart to see her looking so beautiful, knowing that one day in the near future her beauty was going to be rotting away in the cold hard ground.

He looked away, trying to swallow down the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat.

It had been two months since he'd found out about her curse and it never got any easier to bear. In fact, every day he found he was falling in love with her that little bit more as he unlocked new things about her, marvelling in every new discovery and treasuring it in his heart.

The idea of this list was to ensure he wouldn't miss out on anything with her, that he could make sure that he gave her the best life he could offer her. He knew the idea of making plans made her nervous, but if he held her hand and promised to be by her side, maybe she wouldn't find it so daunting.

So, hopping out of bed, he moved across his room to his desk, carefully pushing his latest of drawing of Astoria aside as he grabbed a fresh piece of parchment.

"Number one," he muttered out loud as he scratched the words down in his elegant scrawl. "Get a rabbit."

"What colour?"

Draco thought for a moment and then jotted down the word white. "Hmmm. Too cliche, perhaps?" He pondered to himself, quickly striking a line through it and writing brown instead.