You'd think it would be easy by now; after all it had happened six times before. But, he mused, every time it was just a little harder, just a little more difficult to comprehend. He wasn't sure why, it was only a wedding, but looking at that scrap of parchment informing him that he was to miss the next two days of school for his mother's wedding was a little disconcerting, as he hadn't even known that his mother was even being courted by this man.
Of course, it was a little strange to the public, his mother had only been a widow for the past seven months, how had she found the time to mourn her deceased husband and find a new one in such a short time? They were probably going to start speculating again, she'd left it to close, like with Number Three. He couldn't always remember their names, so they both stuck with numbers, it made it easier to discuss that way without having to remember each of their long and pompous names, quicker too.
Draco leaned in to read his note.
'Missing school again Zabini? Lucky, you'll be missing the charms exam.'
Lucky. That's all they ever saw his time off as. Not confusing, not upsetting, but lucky. They didn't realise that whether you're seven years old, or seventeen, your mother re-marrying without even talking to you about it, when you can still hear her hysterical laughter about how 'The newspapers didn't even realise that you can't kill yourself like that', they don't realise that it's confusing, when you have had six fathers, and you don't even remember what the last one was called. They don't realise how hard it is to keep up the façade of not being bothered by the fact that your mother is an insane little gold-digger. You just have to spend your money on frivolous things, and pretend that it's happening to someone else, all the while checking your food for poisons, in case she's decided that she can get more money on you than on her latest husband.
Then, when you're all grown up, and you've graduated from Hogwarts with flying colours, and Head Boy to boot, you take your allowance and you get the hell out of the country. You go as far as you can from her. From all of them. You go to France, to Spain, and finally Italy, the place of your birth, and you slip into society, rising quickly to the top of the market as the 'Most Eligible Bachelor of the Month' regularly, and taking beautiful women out somewhere every night.
And then you see her. The most unlikely girl to catch your eye, yet she not only captures it, but she takes your heart, and reels it in, like a fish on a line, until you are on your knees, begging for her to marry you. Then some years later, when you have two children with her, a boy and a girl, she dies suddenly, and you slip back into your bachelor cycle, getting a maid for the children, like you had, until you realise that you're slipping from society. You move countries once again, and find yourself in Morocco, where you can blend in without much hassle, and you find more care for the burdens – children, you remind yourself, and find a new wife who will help you climb the social ladder.
Then, you see a new prospective wife, with a higher status, and your current wife has a tragic accident. After several months, you begin to court the prospective wife, and your status and monetary fund grows once again. You begin to see why your mother did this, it's quite pleasing to know the power you hold over people, that final look in their eyes as you set up the last moments of their death, that satisfying feeling when you wash your hands clean of yet another accident.
When your son is old enough, you send him to boarding school, and his younger sister to a different school, one for ladies, where they learn how to be socialites, how to entrance men, how to claw their way up the social ladder without so much as a hair out of their perfectly coifed buns.
Your daughter, Sabrina you think her name is, does remarkably well at this game, clearly taking after her grandmother in this aspect, but takes after you with her Italian looks and her stunning figure. When she is eighteen, she is asked to be married by one of the Dukes of the land, who is first in line to the throne, you realise that she is better than any of you, and she has won the unofficial contest to marry the highest. You, of course, agree and she waltzes off into her life of perpetual pampering, without a thought to the rest of you.
Your son, you forget his name, is a complete disgrace. Not only does he marry below his status, but he tries to cross-breed with a filthy mudblood! Naturally, he is quietly disposed of, but you cannot escape the shame of it, and eventually, as you become old, you feel the need to track down the mud-blood scum that tried to make her way into the Zabini family. When you eventually find her, you discover that she found another well-known family to marry into, the Weasleys, obviously, they didn't have to lower their standards, they already had filth in their ranks, so there probably wasn't any need for the mass attack, but really, the ginger gene was getting out of hand, it needed to be eradicated somehow.
And then, when you're lying on your death bed, resigning yourself to your fate, you realise that you've been poisoned by your wife, and you can't help but to laugh at the irony of it all.