Chapter One: Everybody's Fool

Perfect by nature,

icons of self-indulgence,

just what we all need:

more lies about a world that never was and never will be...

Have you no shame?

Don't you see me?

You know, you've got everybody fooled...

Everybody's Fool - Evanescence

"Mother..." Draco groaned.

"Draco, do you really think you're going to spend the rest of your life sulking around the Manor alone? Besides, she's a nice girl, and very pretty, too!"

"I don't care that she's pretty, Mother! That's not a valid reason to marry someone! What's wrong with letting me choose instead of trying to sell me to other pureblood families!"

"Sell is such a harsh word, darling-"

"But it's what you did! Going around behind my back and arranging a marriage for me! Like I'm not capable of thinking for myself at all! I had more independence when I was eleven! No one wants me, anyway!"

"So how do you explain the girls who've sent you letters about how attractive they find you, the ones with the perfume on the envelopes? And don't forget all those girls from school-"

"Because I can tell that someone really cares by how much they want to ruffle my hair? Bullshit, in my ever-so-arrogant opinion, but then again, it would be unfair to expect more from people who think I can't handle something like courtship!"

"Draco, it's not like that-"

"Isn't it? Hell, you didn't want an arranged marriage! Why should you and Father arrange mine if yours wasn't? Blatant hypocrisy, if you ask me, which, by the way, you forgot to!"

"Maybe if you had given us an idea of what you're looking for-"

"As though you were shopping? Hell no! And I'd have thought that you of all people would want to respect girls! Besides, I have a girlfriend!" Draco winced after realising how carried away he'd gotten, remembering that he had avoided telling his parents at nearly all costs. His mother's hands covered her mouth, but a smile could be seen through the cracks in her pale, frail fingers; by the time she dropped her hands back to her waist, her face was contorted to show regret.

"Oh," she murmured after a prolonged silence.

"Draco, darling, if I'd known..." The words got caught in her throat, so she wrapped her arms around him instead, surprised that he raised his hands to her shoulders after a moment, returning the gesture.

"It's...it's already done...we've already begun making arrangements...the ceremony is almost entirely set up...Draco, I'm sorry..."

He nodded reluctantly, glad that she knew better than to expect him to respond verbally. He'd been more withdrawn than ever since the war's end, and no one except Blaise - and unbeknownst to nearly everyone, Hermione - could get a straight answer out of him. Eventually Narcissa let go of him and he ran up to his room, collapsing on his bed, still habitually fighting back his tears. He'd left Hermione's flat barely two hours before, only to be greeted with the announcement that he would never get a chance to return. When he was able to sit himself up correctly again, he searched the drawer of his bedside table for the slip of paper on which he'd written the Grangers' address.

I won't be needing it now... Draco thought with a grimace as he tore the paper into minuscule bits, not bothering to pick them up from his floor. At least I won't have to try to figure out how to get to Australia...

He grabbed a small velvet-covered box from the drawer, sliding the gold ring from the slit in the middle, running his cold, pale hands over the scintillating sapphire embedded in the band. He'd planned to replace Hermione's Claddagh ring with this engagement one, but now he'd have to settle for keeping it tucked away somewhere forever, just like their relationship. It would be pointless to try to give it to her now, since she would not ever be able to wear it. She would never go by his surname, and they would never live together.

All their attempted planning was for naught, the hours they'd spent fantasising about the possibility of a future together. He'd known that it was next to impossible no matter what, that the Marriage statutes were the Thicknesse-Era laws least likely to be repealed, as many of the "accepting" families also supported them. While he partially understood why people would not want Death Eaters taking advantage of the right to marry Muggleborns - illegitimate unions would be formed with malintentions, and Draco knew that those could range from humiliation to mass murder - he also knew that the biggest problem people had was that legitimate marriages would change the culture in terms of tolerance, and reduce the supposed prominence of the remaining Pureblood familes. He cursed himself, his parents and his culture as he found himself hoping that Ron was able to woo Hermione, a process which Draco had idiotically interrupted little more than three years before.

Later that evening, as he cinched his tie and straightened the jacket of his trademark black suit, he couldn't remember a moment in which he'd hated himself more than he did then. He knew that he had no choice but to go downstairs and further impress the Greengrasses, because it was his bloody duty, and he was weak and spineless and incapable of standing up for himself enough to refuse to do something that was his duty, especially something tied to the bloodline.

Logically Draco knew that it was less his fault than his father's; Draco had been raised to do no more and no less. The bloodline was nearly everything Lucius Malfoy cared about, and dedication to keeping it pure was embedded in every lesson he'd ever halfheartedly tried to teach his luckless, ill-fated only son. Draco was the last heir of the Malfoy family - as the rest of his father's known family had been killed in a tragic fire back when his father was still courting his mother - and one of the last pureblood carriers of the Black lineage; he knew that his choice of wife would essentially shape much of the Wizarding World in the centuries to come. Both the reputations and the survival of two of the most influential pureblood families rested on whether or not his children were pureblood. His entire life he'd known that he'd be bearing the brunt of those expectations, but it had never been a considerable problem for him before. It was an enormous problem for him now, though, because he had a concrete idea in his head of the woman he wanted, and he'd been able to touch her, hold her, kiss her, share a bed and a desperate dream with her, but that didn't matter anymore, since she was Muggleborn, and his right arm was eternally scarred with Voldemort's insignia.

Exasperating his problem even farther was the fact that marriage contracts were bound by old magic, dating back multiple millenia, especially the magic around marriage agreements. Magic so ancient could rarely be broken; both he and Hermione would likely need to put everything they cared about on the line to get him out of it. It would be one hell of a fight. But there was no chance of that, since she would hate his rotten guts for all they're worth and more after the press conference the following morning, during which he and Astoria would announce their engagement.

Look at me! Pathetic...absolutely pathetic. Practically porcelain skin, clothing worthy of a king, surprisingly muscular for someone so thin, just like Mother told me...and still a blackened, broken heart, lungs and liver probably rotting from fags and scotch...nothing but handsome in the mirror, and still nothing but ugly on the inside...