Bleeding Red and Gold REDUX Chapter 2
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Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. They belong to J.K. Rowling. But, I do own all of her books :)
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Ron Weasley was daydreaming. He could still see that beautiful goddess, one Daphne Greengrass from yesterday in his mind's eye. As his imagination wandered, he could see her smiling at him, and he grinned back in what he hoped was a charming manner. Daphne placed a hand on his chest, and drew ever closer—
"Earth to Ronald!" Hermione said, waving her hand in front of Ron's face.
Ron jumped, his daydream shattered, and glared at his best friend.
"What?"
"What on Earth could you be thinking about so deeply Ron? I've never known you to think deeply about anything. Not even Quidditch!"
Harry, who was propped up on his bed reading Flying with the Cannons for perhaps the tenth time, snorted, and said, "I'm betting he hasn't forgotten about Daphne Greengrass, yet, right mate?"
Ron took on a shade of red, and mumbled, "Yeah. She's so pretty, no not even pretty. She's probably the hottest girl in all of Hogwarts."
Hermione shook her head, and muttered, "Boys."
Harry looked up from his book.
"You still haven't gotten over her yet Ron?"
"What do you mean? I'm not even dating her! You're acting like we broke up or something!"
"Well, you do seem to be rather preoccupied with thoughts about her, and you always seem to be brooding. Perhaps there's some sort of sordid affair here that we don't know about." Hermione joined in the teasing.
Ron turned scarlet, and tried to jinx Hermione. 'Levicorpus.'
Hermione merely smirked and flicked her wand, deflecting the curse, before casting a Jelly-Legs jinx at Ron that he was unprepared for. He promptly collapsed onto his face.
"My, my, so unsteady on your feet, mate. I'm sure that Daphne would be so proud if her future husband couldn't take more than two steps without keeling over." Harry smirked.
"Sod off." Ron grumbled, as he muttered the countercurse.
Just then, from downstairs, they heard Mrs. Weasley calling to them, and Ron opened the door in order for them to hear her clearly.
"Ronald, dear, we have something to tell you about your future!" Mrs. Weasley didn't sound particularly happy when she said this, and the trio looked at each other with a measure of apprehension.
"Harry, Hermione, dinner is about to be served. Why don't the three of you come downstairs."
"We're coming Mrs. Weasley." Harry replied, and shrugged his shoulders at his two friends.
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When Ron entered the kitchen, with Harry and Hermione following close behind, he found his Mum setting up the table for nine, and with a pang of grief, he realized that Fred's customary seat had been taken away. Ron still missed his brother, despite the fact that the twins had made him do all sorts of incredibly humiliating and dumb things in the past. He felt even worse when he realized that George wasn't here, and the twins were generally the life and soul of these gatherings. Nowadays, George buried himself in his work at the joke shop, and he didn't seem to be putting as much effort into pranks anymore. It was almost as if he was doing them simply because he thought that that was what most people expected of him, and not because he actually enjoyed causing mischief anymore. The war had indeed scarred everybody, and nobody was immune from the pain.
"What did you want to talk to me about, Mum?"
"Hold on dear." Mrs. Weasley said, as she waved her wand, causing a jug of butterbeer, the butter, and a loaf of bread to fly to the table. A knife followed quickly, which began to slice the bread and spread butter upon the slices.
"Come with me. Harry dear, could you please make sure nothing burns while I'm away. If it does, I trust you can fix it."
"No problem, Mrs. Weasley." Harry, having had to cook for the Dursleys during the time he spent there, was actually a fairly competent cook. Magic just made cooking infinitely easier for him. Admittedly he was curious about what "future" that Ron would have, but he did understand that it was probably private. Thus, he turned his attention to the stove, and made sure that whatever was cooking there wasn't about to burn.
Ron followed his mother out of the kitchen and into the living room. There, his father sat on the couch, holding a piece of fancy paper in his hand and looking quite anxious and worried. His mother joined him. Ron preferred to stand, seeing the couch already almost filled, and remembering an uncomfortable conversation where he, Harry, and Hermione sat on that very couch, squeezed together, as they listened to the Last Will and Testament of Albus Dumbledore from Rufus Scrimgeour, then Minister of Magic.
"What is it you wanted to talk to me about, Dad? What does it have to do with my future?" Ron asked, curious.
"Ronald, you were entered into a marriage contract." His father said heavily.
"What? When? How come you never told me?" Ron was shocked and outraged. How could his parents have kept something that important from him for this long? He'd had a relationship with both Lavender and Hermione for Merlin's sake, and now they deigned to tell him?
"We didn't know, Ronnie dear." Mrs. Weasley said.
Ron turned a brilliant shade of orange at the nickname that his mother had used since he was young.
"What? You didn't enter me into this contract?"
"No, it was entered by your great-grandfather."
"Who Mum? Please don't tell me it's Eloise Midgeon or someone ugly like that." Ron still hadn't reconciled with the fact that Eloise Midgeon did not look that bad anymore, as her acne and her nose had been fixed up by Madam Pomfrey quickly.
"Ronald, don't judge a girl by her looks! How many times do I have to tell you that?!" Mrs. Weasley scolded.
Ron mumbled, "Sorry."
"Anyways, no it's not Eloise Midgeon."
"She's very pretty, Ronald. Just…a bit cold and dark." Mr. Weasley said.
"Who? Can you get to the point and tell me who it is?"
"Daphne Greengrass." Said Mrs. Weasley.
Ron shook his head, knowing there was no way he heard correctly. Was Fate messing with him?
"I'm sorry. I thought you'd just said Daphne Greengrass. Come again?"
Mrs. Weasley looked at him strangely. "You heard correctly. You, or rather, our family, has been entered into a marriage contract with the Greengrasses. This contract is set to expire in about two yeas as the deadline is rapidly approaching. As you are the last son "eligible" in our family to be married to the Greengrasses, you are the one fulfilling the contract. I'm very sorry Ronald, and I've looked into ways to break the contract, but it simply can't be done."
Ronald felt a bit light-headed after that.
"I think I need to sit down."
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Ron collapsed onto the couch. Harry looked at him strangely, taking in his pale face, and determined that something must have shocked Ron to the core in that room.
He came up to him and whispered, "Mate, are you alright? What happened?"
Ron lifted his eyes to look at him, and said, "I'm betrothed."
Harry, in confusion, said, "When? I never saw you proposing to anybody?"
Ron mentally kicked himself. Of course Harry wouldn't know much about Wizarding customs and Marriage Contracts.
"Harry, in the Wizarding World, we still do things the "old way", as Muggles might call it. Our parents can still enter us into Marriage Contracts, and we'd be forced by our magic to marry our partner."
"That's barbaric! I never knew your mother or father had it in them to do that to you. They were always so kind." Now Hermione was glaring at the Weasley parents, but Ron quickly waved his hands to tell her to stop.
"It wasn't my mum or dad. Sometimes these contracts can be passed down from generations. This one was actually created by my Great Grandfather about 200 years ago."
"Who is it to?"
Then, the full meaning of what his mother had just told him finally sunk in. The beautiful, no insanely HOT, girl he had seen in Diagon Alley was his betrothed.
"Daphne Greengrass." He said breathlessly.
Harry immediately smirked, and said, "Alright there, mate? Not too overwhelmed by the news? I'm sure that now you can cause whatever mental images you had of her to become true!"
Ron glared at him. "You're just jealous."
Harry frowned, "While I do admit that she is very beautiful, and that I might be just a tiny bit jealous, but I'd prefer to know who I'm getting married to instead of being forced to marry someone, no matter how beautiful they are."
Hermione smiled approvingly at him, but inside she was rather hurt. She had thought that she and Ron had something, especially considering their relationship throughout the hunt for Horcruxes. Now, he was in stuck in a contract with another witch, and a Slytherin at that. She was also really hot, and Hermione knew that in Ron's book, looks counted for a lot. Hermione would never be able to compare to the beauty of Daphne Greengrass.
Just then, Ron's parents came over, and Harry and Hermione automatically stepped back, letting Ron's parents talk to him. Afterwards, Percy came and dragged her to the library where he had a couple of questions about his slightly less boring work about the money exchange between Galleons and British pounds. Hermione was the only one he could ask since Harry had never really had any Muggle money before, his aunt and uncle having done their utmost to deny Harry anything other than what was absolutely needed to keep him alive. The work was slightly more interesting than the regulations on the thickness of cauldron bottoms, but it still put Hermione to sleep sometimes, which was hard considering that she held the record of longest time awake in Professor Binns' class at Hogwarts. That stopped the conversation that Hermione wanted to have with Ron about their relationship. She was fairly sure what the conclusion would be anyways.
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The shock of the marriage contract had slowly gotten away, replaced by both apprehension and excitement. On one hand, there was a reason Daphne was the Ice Queen of Slytherin. At least Ron was protected from ever being killed by her as the Marriage Contract forbade killing between the partners in order to free themselves from the contract. That didn't mean that Daphne couldn't castrate him or do something far worse, though. On the other hand, Ron was quite excited by the prospect of meeting, and getting to know the hottest girl in Slytherin. Nobody else had ever attempted to do this, as those who showed the remotest interest in her were warned off by that friend of hers, Tracey Davis. And the few that persisted were usually sent to the infirmary for a couple of days.
"Still thinking about your beloved, mate?" Harry asked, smirking.
Ron groaned. Harry had spent the better part of the last couple of days teasing him to no end about his reaction to the marriage contract, and specifically the girl involved in the contract.
"Oh for Merlin's sake, I will hex you if you make one more comment about Daphne."
"Strange, I'd like to think that people would talk about their beloved more. You don't seem to want to talk about her. It's almost as if this crushed your dream. Which dream was it, your dream to marry Malfoy and grow blonde hair?"
Ron raised his wand threateningly. "You do know I'm about to hex you."
"With your magical ability? I'd be more worried about the wall."
And Ronald Weasley spent the rest of that day without a wand, as he'd managed to hit an incoming Hermione with the "Furnunculus Hex." Hermione had rapidly retaliated, and Ron had succumbed to multiple jinxes and hexes by the time Mrs. Weasley showed up on the scene. After berating her son for being so childish, she took his wand from him for the day.
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The story will start to diverge from the original soon. Please do not make any silly assumptions as to where this story is going.
