I know, I know. I shouldn't be starting a new story when I'm already fighting to find the time to update two others (by the way - BOTH will be updated shortly - I promise! Got a bit of writer's block with Between the Pages, but we're good now :) ). But here it is - it was simmering in my head all day and I couldn't resist getting it down on the page. Review if you can please!

Hermione Granger, war heroine and Brightest Witch of her Age, stormed out of St. Mungo's in a rage reminiscent of the early days of the war. If Harry Potter or Ron Weasley had been there to witness it, both would have cringed and found somewhere safe to tuck away until the storm passed.

But neither were there with her - which had played a part in making an already tense situation worse.

It wasn't their fault, Hermoine had reasoned earlier in the day as she waited to be seen by the doctors. Ron had been at his post as Quidditch Correspondent straight out of Hogwarts. Hermione had been delighted and impressed that he wasn't completely incapable of finishing writing assignments. His dedication to the job had far exceeded his dedication to anything else, including their fledgling relationship, so they had both let it go quietly.

It was the week of the Quidditch World Cup and Ron had left yesterday, along with Harry, who was going to see Ginny play for the Harpies. She'd managed to talk Minerva into letting her finish her studies abroad as she trained with the team, and it was holding up well.

But that meant that Hermione was here alone in London. On the day of her meeting with the committee of doctors assigned to her parent's care, despite the fact that they still resided in Australia. The doctors who had just told her that there was nothing left to do.

It just wasn't something Hermione was willing to accept, which was why she was storming through the hall, papers flying off of countertops around her from the flow of magic she couldn't quite control.

She strode into the waiting room and a rack with newspapers went over. Closing her eyes, she willed the magic to ebb, and then sank into a nearby chair, ignoring the stare of the few healers in the vicinity.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

They'd had just finished a war, for god's sake, less than two years ago! And sometimes it got so overwhelming, the feeling that the battle was nowhere near over, that she was still struggling up the same impossible hill.

Hermione opened her eyes and the people standing nearby wavered through a thin film of tears. Anger swept up inside of her, heating her cheeks, and she stood and walked quickly through the door and out onto the street where the apparition point was. With a quick turn and a crack, she was gone.

Draco found himself in a similar situation that day, though he didn't know it.

And he was many, many miles away, in a lawyer's office in France, ignoring the chatter. The two men before him had lapsed into their native language and he could only pick up bits and pieces. But he didn't need the words to understand. The frustration with which they leafed through pages of parchment gave it away - the bind he was in. He'd finally hit the red tape, after a little over a year of tentative freedom.

It had all seemed too good to be true at first.

All of it. The end of the war. The light side winning, Voldemort disappearing - his eye twitched at the very thought of the name, though the lawyers didn't notice - and then the trials. Draco had barely been able to see the trio standing off to the side, but he heard them clearly enough. Granger loud and insistent. Harry quieter, sounding tired, but just as determined. And Ron begrudgingly adding his own support to the relay of events.

The part that still shocked him was Lucius.

Draco and his mother should have done some time away, some sort of penance, even if it wasn't at Azkaban, but Lucius had offered up a deal - his wand and fifteen years locked away, for the relative freedom of his wife and Narcissa. And it seemed that the Wizengamot had been content with that. They didn't want to take out entire families, not after the losses wizarding society had suffered. It was enough to have a handful of individuals to really pin it to. And Lucius had served himself up. Even after seventeen years of knowing the man, Draco would have never expected it.

So Lucius was serving out his fifteen years in a prison now thankfully devoid of dementors. And Draco had spent six months immediately after the war repairing Hogwarts. Narcissa had gone surprisingly quietly when they recruited her for reparations in Muggle towns around England, and she had come back more pensive but no less strong, chin held high even in the trousers and work shirts they'd put her in.

She was here, now in France. Staying at a chateau that the family owned. The only other property they owned, as Draco currently rented out a flat on the outskirts of wizarding London, where he was rarely hunted after for photographs and scandalous articles.

He had only just portkeyed here this morning. His mother had insisted on breakfast, though he would have gone to see her anyway, and it had been tense. Somewhat sad. Because everything was hanging in the balance today; scrawled out on those parchments in front of him, one of which he watched slide off of the edge of the table and float to a well-carpeted floor.

"I want to tell you it wouldn't matter -" his mother had tried, but he was already shaking his head across from her.

"It would. We can't lose everything, not over something like this, something that was planned the whole time anyway, mother."

"But it isn't planned anymore!" Her usually calm demeanor was broken by the flash of her eyes, grey like his own, almost iridescent when she was angry. "And I wouldn't have it any other way," she continued. "To have you marry into the Greengrass family after everything. If the war has taught us anything it's that it's time to break tradition."

Draco leaned back in the chair, crossing his legs out of habit, mirroring his mother where she crossed hers delicately at the ankles.

"This does seem cruel of the Ministry."

He'd had time to consider it. Months, actually, almost a year, as they'd passed the law relatively quickly after the war. They would let pureblood lines continue. But not in the case of sympathizers; anyone in deep enough with Voldemort would need to marry into Muggle or half-blood, or not at all.

Which, for Draco and his family, would mean losing the Malfoy estates except for the small 20% they'd be allotted.

It was more than many families had to live on for their entire lives. And perhaps Narcissa and Draco could have resigned themselves to that, if the law hadn't included heirlooms as well.

Only three months previously, on a short and rare visit to the Manor, Draco had found his mother standing in what used to be her bedroom. She and Lucius had slept apart, though it didn't diminish their devotion to one another. And he'd seen that day as he'd seen many times before the intricate wandwork that released a section of the hardwood floor to rise up - a box, fit perfectly and inconspicuously just beneath where the window lay.

His mother had bent gracefully, skirt pooling out around her, and levitated the box up and around. As it tipped gently, a string of pearls tumbled out into her waiting palm.

"The problem is that they'll leave the money," she had mused later that night. "And they will take everything else first."

Earlier that morning he'd made her a promise. One that was now becoming almost impossible to keep, judging by the look of consternation on his lawyer's faces.

"There's no way around it then?" he bit out, interrupting their flawless French. The men glanced at one another. The one on the left, Allard, riffled through the papers and adjusted a pair of ridiculous glasses perched on his nose.

"It would appear, Monsieur Malfoy, that Wizarding Britain has done a remarkable job closing any loops we may have been able to squeeze you through. I'm afraid that in order to retain your family's fortune, and valuables, you will have to marry within the year. If you make it to nineteen as an unwed head of household they can claim it all."

Draco felt his world narrow, quite suddenly, to that cluttered room in France.

It would appear that the future of forced tradition he thought he'd escaped had been replaced by a different kind of force. He needed to find someone to marry, and although he had eight months, it would take all of that time to sort through the wreckage of what kind of women were left for him. He'd already vicariously experienced the leeches of the Wizarding world through Blaise, who had been engaged four times already to vixens disturbingly similar to his mother.

Unfortunately it appeared that anyone even remotely interested in marrying a Malfoy would be in it for the money. And that wasn't something his pride would allow - tradition was one thing, greed was another.

Which meant he had to figure something out quickly. Or all he and his mother had left would be taken from them.