A.N: Written for the Hunger Games challenge on the HPFC – Prompt: Flavius, Octavia & Venia – Write about someone being made beautiful for a big event.

- Astoria is being made ready for her arranged wedding to Draco Malfoy, and struggles to come to terms with the hand that life has dealt her.

oOo

I had cried so much already, in the weeks leading up to my arranged marriage to Draco Malfoy, but it seemed I was still able to bring up more tears. It was the day of my wedding – a wedding I had begged and pleaded not to be part of – and I was still not ready for this. I didn't want to become a married woman, not yet. I was only eighteen – fresh out of school for less than a year, but already my parents were marrying me off, desperate to get me into a marriage of purity before I had the chance to make my own decisions. As I thought of my mother and father, who had selfishly set up this marriage long before I'd even finished my studies at Hogwarts, I dissolved into tears again, my head in my hands atop of my dressing table.

I was supposed to be getting ready for my wedding. We were due to make our vows in an hour's time, at twelve on the dot. I looked up at myself in the mirror; a mess of a woman, I looked. My face was swollen from crying so much, my eyes were puffy and bloodshot, my cheeks tear-streaked and my skin blotchy and red in places. How was I supposed to walk down the aisle looking like this? I remembered my older sister, Daphne, and the position she was in, less than a year ago. But for some odd reason, Daphne had never professed any distaste for marrying someone she didn't love. In fact, I seem to remember her openly discussing Gregory Goyle with our parents, when we came home for the summer holidays one year. Daphne had married Goyle as soon as she left Hogwarts – literally about two months after her graduation. She looked happy, and radiant, and everything a bride should look on her wedding photos. But despite looking like she was ecstatic to be marrying the lump that was Gregory Goyle, and living with him over at the Goyle manor in Wiltshire, she still seemed to spend the majority of her time over here, in our house. I knew she didn't have any feelings for him, at least not romantically. The only part of Goyle she was attracted to was his pure blood. And pure blooded men were becoming harder and harder to catch these days; something my mother was always reminding me. As generations went on, people were marrying half-blood witches or wizards, or even muggle-borns. Daphne had probably married Goyle quickly for fear that someone else with a pure-blood background, like Millicent Bullstrode or Pansy Parkinson, would get there first.

I was thinking deeply about Daphne and her life choice, when she suddenly walked through the door and into my bedroom. She took one look at me, hunched over the dressing table, and sighed, loudly.

"Pull yourself together, Astoria!" She hissed. I looked up at her, noticing she was carrying several boxes, piled on top of each other in small-to-large size range. She placed the boxes down on the bed, and put her hands on her hips, staring at me impatiently. "You haven't even started to get ready! You should have at least started putting your make-up on at this point, Astoria! What is wrong with you?"

"I can't do this, Daphne," I began. I sat up and leaned back in my chair. "I'm not like you! I can't just marry some random bloke I've hardly said two words to in my entire life!"

"You have to do this, you know you do," Daphne replied through pursed lips. I noticed that she was already wearing her bridesmaids dress, a pretty affair of pale blue, and her hair was piled up in a complicated updo on top of her head. "It's for the sake of your blood purity, for all your children's blood purity."

"I don't care about blood purity!" I exclaimed, exasperated. I was sick of telling them all this, over and over again for the last several weeks. "I mean, I do, of course I do – but not yet! I've only just left school! I want to get a job; I want to have a life before I – before I even think about getting married!"

Daphne made a flapping motion with her hands and urged me to be quiet. She was right, of course. The last thing my mother needed was to come up and find us having a heated argument right before my wedding. "Listen to me, Astoria. The Malfoys are essentially the last family with such a long, pure bloodline – they have pure blood in their veins from as far back as the sixteen hundreds! Don't you realise, you will be doing our entire family an honour by marrying him! You're practically marrying into royalty."

"I don't-"

"Stop telling me you don't care! Of course you care! And Malfoy isn't too bad, you know. He's a good looking bloke, in his own way. You could have a great life with him, they are completely loaded, that family.

"All I wish for in life is the ability to make my own choices. Why can't no-one understand that?"

Daphne sighed, and stood behind me, beginning to tidy up my hair, in the process of fixing it into a style similar to her own. "We don't get that choice, Astoria. Do you think I really wanted to marry that hopeless lump, Gregory? He's a nightmare to live with. But I'm growing to love him, in my own way. Of course I didn't love him at first – I just wanted to do our family proud – but as time goes on, I think I am starting to nurse a very strong fondness for him." She didn't sound convinced, but I continued to listen. She carried on for a while, talking about Goyle and his relationship with the Malfoy, and on and on about how pure in blood they were. I started to grow tired of listening to her drone on and on, and focused on my reflection in the mirror, which was gradually changing as Daphne continued to make me up.

She painted my face from a scowling one, to someone pretty and delicate. My skin transformed from patchy and red, to porcelain skinned and glowing. My lips were painted a soft, nude pink, and my eyes were outlined neatly with a soft brown pencil. I looked effortlessly natural, all in a few minutes time. Daphne's expert fingers were in my hair next, pulling it up and twisting bits about, until it looked just as lovely as hers, in a very similar style. She turned me around in the chair and smiled brightly. "You look lovely, Astoria."

I forced a smile back. She turned around and walked back over to the bed, beginning to open the boxes. "These are your wedding items."

She reached for a flat, medium sized box. It looked fairly new, a fashionable, matte black box with gold lettering sprawled across it. "Something new, this is a present from Gregory and me." Daphne smiled, somewhat mischievously, and opened the box. She pulled the items out of some crinkled black tissue paper.

"Daphne!" I hissed, disgusted. She was holding up two pieces of scanty black underwear.

"Don't be such a prude," she replied, chucking the bra and knickers at me, and turned around. "Get them on quick, so we can get your wedding dress on."

I groaned inwardly, and pulled my pyjama top over my head. I hurriedly pulled the underwear on, not impressed with how it felt. I preferred comfortable underwear, not this lacy thing that went right up my—

"Can I turn around now?" Daphne asked, and then turned around anyway. She clapped her hands, delighted. "Oh, Astoria! You look fabulous!"

"I don't feel it," I muttered, feeling very self-conscious. "What is the point in this? No one will see my underwear under my dress."

"It's not for you or the rest of the people, idiot," she replied. "It's for Draco, after your wedding!"

Of course. Daphne would be expecting me to give myself to Malfoy tonight, straight after the wedding, and start producing little pure blood Draco's and Astoria's almost immediately. I knew she and Goyle had been trying, but so far there were no results of a pregnancy. I didn't even bother to voice my thoughts on not planning to sleep with Malfoy tonight, because I knew it would just result in another argument about blood purity, and I just wanted to get this thing over with. "What's next?"

"Something old…" she opened the largest box, a huge, circular box which was browning with age. Carefully, she pulled out a musty-smelling, large wedding dress. "Let's get you into it, then." She came over to me, and helped me into my bodice, lacing it up so tightly at my back that I almost couldn't breathe. I stepped into the circular hoop of the wedding dress gingerly, and Daphne started to pull the material up and around my shoulders. She turned me around to face the full length mirror near the door.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," I moaned, screwing my eyes up shortly after getting a good look at my reflection. It was the hideous, century-old wedding dress of my mother and all her female predecessors before her. The skirt was huge and wide, made almost entirely from lace, but the top of the skirt and the bodice was made of fraying silk. It would, probably have looked okay if not for the long, heavy sleeves that hung down to my knees when I relaxed my arms. It covered my chest almost completely, and buttoned right up to my neck. The white of the dress was fading, and now held more of a creamy, yellow stain to it. "Why, why does it have to be this old thing!"

"Astoria!" hissed Daphne, shoving me in the arm gently. "You know how important this wedding dress is! It's tradition for the women of our family to wear our great-great-great-grandmother's wedding dress. I wore it and I loved it!" Once again, Daphne's voice didn't sound so sure when she reeled off the last line. "Stop complaining. There's nothing else for you to wear now!"

"I'd rather just go in the underwear," I muttered, more to myself than Daphne, who was now opening the next box, a much smaller one, about the size of a small plate. She opened it, revealing a piece of white elastic lace, with a strip of blue ribbon running through it. I looked puzzled. "What on earth is that?"

"Something blue; your garter. Lift up your skirts," Daphne got down on her knees next to me, and I hitched up the many lacy skirts of the dress. She put my foot through the elastic, and started to roll it up my leg until it was in the middle of my thigh.

"That, I really don't see the point of. I'm not even wearing stockings," I sighed, dropping the skirts back down to the floor."

"It's just tradition, Astoria, just deal with it."

"What's the last box?" I nodded over to a fair sized, square box.

"This is the best one! It's our mothers…Something borrowed."

This was the one thing I knew I liked. I had seen it on my mother's wedding photos, and Daphne had also worn it. I reached out and took the dark green, velvet lined box out of Daphne's hands, and opened it carefully. It was a tiara, of polished silver and thickset, deep emeralds. I had always loved seeing the pictures of this crown, and I knew this would be the only thing I would be happy to wear. Daphne took it from me, and placed it carefully in my hair. "It's such a beautiful piece," she said, almost breathlessly. I noticed how heavy the tiara was, and wondered if I'd be able to hold my head up straight for the whole wedding. Daphne stepped back, and took a good, long look at me. "You look amazing!"

I turned around to the mirror again, and then looked over at the picture of Daphne and Goyle in their wedding finery, and the one next to it, of our mother and father at their wedding. "I look exactly like you and Mum on your wedding days," I said, blandly. Daphne didn't seem to hear the melancholy in my voice, however.

"Yes! You look wonderful. And your daughters will wear that dress, and so will their daughters…"

I vowed inwardly to make sure no daughter of mine would ever wear this horrible dress.

Suddenly, there was a sharp knock on the door, and our mother came in. She was wearing dress robes in dark blue and lilac. "Come on, girls!" she said to them. "Mr Malfoy is already here, and waiting at the altar." She took a good, long look at me, and smiled. "Yes, my tiara sets the whole thing off wonderfully, doesn't it?" Before I could answer, she turned around, and hurried down the stairs, probably to take her seat back in the garden, where the ceremony would be holding place.

Daphne pulled my bedroom doors open fully, to make room for the dress. "Well, Astoria," she said, and gave a weak smile. "Showtime."

oOo