Author's Notes: Written for Fire the Canon's Album Challenge on the HPFC Forum, in which each track from an album is used for inspiration for a one-shot in a collection.

I am using the album Frustration Plantation by Rasputina.

Doomsday averted.

)O(

Throughout Cedrella's childhood, marriage was a far-off thing, so far away that it might never even happen, and then, all of a sudden, she was standing in her bedroom with her arms outstretched and her sisters were helping the dressmaker fit her with lengths of pearl-coloured silk for her wedding dress.

"Are you listening to me, Cedrella?" Lysandra asked sharply.

"Yes, Mother."

"What did I just say?"

"I don't know."

"I was saying that Mr. Rosier will expect his bride to act like a lady, and not go running about like a girl of six. Tomboyishness is not attractive, Cedrella."

"Cedrella isn't a tomboy, Mother," Charis said dutifully, from her position at Cedrella's feet, where she was basting up the of the dress with carefully controlled but utterly effortless little movements of her wand.

"Not to you, perhaps, but to a man of Mr. Rosier's age and stature..."

Mr. Rosier's age and stature.

Old.

Wealthy.

Too old, and not wealthy enough to make up for it. Tears pricked Cedrella's eyes with the same pain as the pins pricking her waist and legs when the dressmaker was careless. She knew not to complain – she had tried to, once, to Callidora, and received a swift smack around the face and a reminder that Callidora's own husband was sixteen years her senior.

But Callidora was suited to an older husband. Callidora was soft and quiet and plump, with the disposition of an amiable cow. She could sit contentedly in a parlour and read or listen to music or sew for hours on end, and engage in the sort of quiet, intellectual, unexcitable discourse that her husband so enjoyed. She had been content to retire at the age of seventeen to life of semi-reclusive comfort and monotony that would not end until her husband died.

Cedrella was not so content. She could not fathom the prospect of waking up every morning and being faced with days upon days of endless nothing. Quiet conversation did not excite her, and a life without excitement would be no life at all for her.

Mr. Rosier was a good man, she knew. He was intelligent enough, and well-disposed, but so serious and old-fashioned that to spend the rest of her life with him was a thought so agonizing that it brought her to tears instantaneously.

"Cedrella?" Callidora asked through a mouthful of pins. "Are you all right?"

"Fine."

She was not fine in the least.

That night, Cedrella laid in bed and watched the skeleton of a wedding dress – which had been hung from the door of her wardrobe – flutter slightly in the wind from her window. The rustle of silk on silk might have been comforting (it had the same sound as tall moor grass in a breeze), had the very presence of the dress not been an indisputable signal that marriage, and the end of life that would come with it, was hurtling towards her faster than she could imagine.

Cedrella rose from the bed and paced her bedroom, back and forth, back and forth.

When Mr. Rosier placed the ring on her finger, she might be just as well-served to walk directly into her own grave as to kiss him. She could save herself agony if she did; otherwise, the rest of her married life would be nothing more than her waiting to die.

She stopped in front of the window and grasped the sill. The cool night air lifted her hair, and brought with it the scent of the city – a city that she would be cut off from the moment that she was to be held accountable to Mr. Rosier.

It was unfair. It was unfair and not right that a girl as young as she should never have a chance to run freely.

It was unfair, and she would not stand for it.

Cedrella turned away from the window, and moved, trance-like, to her chest of drawers, and from the bottom drawer, she drew the white leather satchel that Mr. Rosier had given her as a gift soon after they were betrothed. For a moment, she felt guilt, for it had been a lovely gift, but her guilt did not forestall her.

Into the satchel she folded stockings, petticoats, and her woollen winter cloak. Things that would not be missed. She emptied half the contents of her coin pouch into it also, and placed the pouch itself on the edge of her dressing table, so that, when the time came, she could gather it up too, and quickly.

She had nowhere to go with her satchel full of clothes and galleons, not yet. But she had time to think on that. After all, her wedding was not for weeks yet, and she should not give her family a chance to track her down between when she left with her satchel, and when she was meant to stand in the church with Mr. Rosier and lay her life down just as permanently.

She did not want to have to leave. She knew that refusing marriage meant that she would no longer be able to tout the name Black with pride, no longer take her rightful place on the family tree, no longer be able to see her beloved sisters.

But if she had to give up those things in order to save herself from a life of suffering, then she would give them up gladly.

)O(

Doomsday averted.