A/N: Thank you to everyone who's reviewed so kindly. And thank you, a million times over, to my formatting monkey Gabriele, who's put so much hard work into this story.

Chapter 3

Draco Malfoy sat before the fire in his library and read the letter in his hand for the tenth time since it had been delivered by a barn owl, twenty minutes earlier.

Malfoy, (he read)
Next August 11th, I will turn twenty-five years old. If you're interested in saving your own neck, I suppose we had better talk about getting married before then. I can meet you at the Blue Onion Pub in Yew Street on Friday at 6.00 to discuss particulars.
G. Weasley

It was terse to the point of rudeness, but reading it, he felt a weight he had not even known he was carrying lift from his mind. They had never mentioned the Curse to one another, even when they had been at school together, and Draco had determined long ago that he would never ask her to marry him.

There had been a time when he would rather have died than to marry a Weasley. Those days might be over, but old habits died hard, and he still had never been able to come to the point of begging one of them to save his life. He had preferred to go on hoping for a letter just like this, rather than to put himself at her mercy. She hated him. He had no doubt that, were it not for the sake of her eldest brother, he would be living out the final year of his life right now.

But it was all right. She was going to – well, he preferred to think of it as a temporary political alliance. That was it: she was going to ally with him, for a short time, to achieve an end necessary to them both. It was certainly not, by any stretch of the imagination, going to be a m-m-. He shuddered. He couldn't even say the word in his own mind. He read the letter one more time, whistling softly as he skimmed over the words. If the tone of it was any indication, living with her was going to make for one hell of an unpleasant year. But at least – and this was the point, after all – he would be alive at the end of it. He smiled grimly to himself as he picked up his quill to write his reply.

Friday night at 6.02, Draco was nursing a pint of Brunhilda's Best Bitter at a table in The Blue Onion and silently fuming. She was late. What if she didn't show? What if this was her idea of a joke, set up to have a laugh at him?

He had always been nasty to her, back at school, he had no trouble admitting that. Well, it wasn't as though she hadn't deserved it, asked for it, even. She was an easy mark, then: Potter's little ginger-haired groupie. They had both secretly, silently known they would one day come to this, and yet she had always looked right through him, as though she found nothing worth looking twice at. She had been too busy always looking at Potter instead. And Draco had made her pay for it, in a hundred little ways, all those years at school. He had made sure that if he was going to have to marry her one day, then she would be just as miserable about it as he was.

The rub was that now she held his life in her hands. Perhaps she intended to make him suffer, to raise his hopes then stand him up? Well, he did not have to wait around to be made a joke of. He had just stood up to leave when the door opened and she came in.

He hadn't seen her since he'd left school nine years ago but he would have recognised that shocking Weasley hair anywhere. He allowed himself a quick, silent sigh that might have been relief, though he chose to think of it as resignation, and sat back down.

He watched her as she squinted against the dim light of the pub, searching for him. She was short. He couldn't make out anything else about her shape, as she was wearing her work robes. For all he could tell she might, underneath them, be built like her mother. He buried his face in his stein and took a deep pull of his bitter.

He would have known, even without the gold MM embroidered on the shoulder of her robes, that she was a Ministry Auror. Business had been slow for the Aurors , since the war had put an end to the Death Eaters. He knew she was the only one to have been accepted into Auror training in the last five years. He knew that she specialised in Defensive Charm work, travelling around Europe, building wards and spells around secure areas. He knew she lived with a flatmate on the cheap side of London, that she dated one or two men sporadically, followed rugby as well as Quidditch, and that she was considered good at her job. He had done his homework on Ginny Weasley.

Her hair was pulled into an untidy knot at the back of her head. He couldn't see her face clearly from that distance, but he noticed that several of the men at the bar had turned and were eyeing her appreciatively. One of them spoke to her, and Draco watched her shake her head as though annoyed by what the man had said.

He knew she had caught sight of him when she stilled so abruptly and completely that she might have been turned to stone. After a long moment, she glanced at the door, and then back at him. The man at the bar said something to her again and put his hand on her arm. She spoke sharply to him and shrugged off his hand and that seemed to make up her mind for her. She made her way around the tables to where he sat, and automatically, spurred by good breeding and years of proper training, Draco stood.

"Malfoy." Her tone was flat, betraying nothing of what she must have felt.

"Weasley," he returned, just as evenly. "What are you drinking?"

She hesitated. "Red wine." She slid onto the settle across the table from him and added, "Please."

He pushed his way through the jostling crowd around the bar and examined the meagre wine list written up in chalk on the slate board above the bar. He had never heard of any of the choices, a mark, he thought irritably, of the low quality of the pub she had chosen. He ordered the most expensive merlot – which at four Sickles a goblet, couldn't have been all that good, and when the bartender brought it, he carried it back to the table and sat down.

He set it in front of her and she began immediately to fiddle with the stem while staring determinedly at the tabletop. He waited for her to speak but she said nothing. She was the one who had called this meeting, he thought crossly. Was he supposed to do all the talking? The silence stretched out. She was determined to make it difficult for him, then. As if it weren't insufferable enough, the thought of living with her for a year – legally married and all – now she was going to make him ask her for the privilege. Rebellion, and a regrettable streak of recklessness asserted itself: He would never ask her.

"Weasley," he prodded. When she looked up, he was surprised to see that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. It wasn't what he had expected. He sighed. Crying women were a subject at which he'd never been very adept. Just now, it worried him.

"Weasley," he repeated sharply, "Can we please dispense with the waterworks and get down to the business at hand?"

She drew a deep breath and leaned in close to him across the table, invading his space, threatening him. When she spoke her voice was low and shook with intensity.

"I want you to know, Malfoy , that if it were just my own life at stake here, and not my brother's, I'd let you hang and I wouldn't lose an hour's sleep over it. Your miserable life means nothing to me. Nothing! I'm marrying you for Bill's sake and only for Bill's sake, do you understand me?" Her eyes flashed furious sparks at him as she spoke, and two spots of brilliant red had appeared in her otherwise pallid cheeks.

He made a motion as if swatting at an irksome fly. "Yes, yes Weasley," he drawled, affecting an indifference he did not feel. "Of course! This is no great love affair; no one thinks anything different. Only, can we please get the details sorted out? I'm rather keen to get home."

Her eyes widened, then narrowed again. She regarded him suspiciously, while he returned her scrutiny with a bland smile. Finally, she sat back and pulled a piece of parchment from the pocket of her robes. She slapped it onto the tabletop. "Fine. But before I agree to anything, I have a list of important points I want to be very clear on."

He sat back and stretched out his legs, lacing his fingers together behind his head. "Right. Carry on."

"First," she held up one finger and consulted her list. "The Curse Standard says we have to live together – and I quote – 'as man and wife, a year and a day.' It says nothing about sleeping together. I looked into it, and was told – on good authority – that 'as man and wife' only means that we have to live in the same house. So Point Number One is," she consulted the parchment, "No sex. None."

He looked revolted. "Good god Weasley, I never even thought of such a thing!"

Her nostrils flared, and her eyes narrowed. "Good. Just so we understand each other. Point Number Two follows on that: I get my own bedroom."

"Yes, naturally you'll have your own bedroom," he said with exaggerated patience. "I'm certainly not sharing mine with you."

"Point Number Three." He thought she almost expanded, like an indignant hen ruffling her feathers. "I'm not changing my name."

He exploded at her then, sitting straight up in his seat. "What the devil do I care what you do with your name, Weasley? Call yourself Smythe , Jones or – or Potter for all it matters to me! I thought you said your list was important. You're wasting my time!"

"Point – Number – Four," with each word, she jabbed the parchment with her finger, and spoke through gritted teeth. "I'm going to be living – where?"

"Ah now we're getting somewhere!" he said triumphantly. He lounged back and laced his fingers behind his head again. "I have a home in the Highlands of Scotland. The Cairngorms. We'll live there." He smirked. "In separate bedrooms, of course."

She seemed surprised to hear this. "Not at Malfoy Mansion?"

Draco felt the creeping bitterness that always accompanied the name of his family home, but he was careful to inject just the right amount of boredom into his voice. "No Weasley, I sold Malfoy Mansion after the war, haven't lived there for years. My home is at Four Winds now."

"Four Winds," she said experimentally. "There's an Apparition Port nearby, I hope. I'll need to get to work every day."

"There is an Apparition Port built into the house."

"Right in the house? That's unusual." She looked as though she didn't believe him.

"Well, the estate is rather remote, you see. I believe the next closest Port is five miles to the south, which can be very inconvenient during the winter." He wanted to add that she would be more than welcome to walk to it every day, if she wanted, especially during the winter, but he felt it would sound churlish.

"Oh." She lapsed into silence and toyed with her wine glass. Now that she had finished her list of demands, the fight seemed to be ebbing out of her.

He watched her. Though the lighting was dim he could see the dusting of freckles across her cheeks. She also appeared to have an unfortunate bit of sunburn on her nose, which was beginning to peel. The effect was wholly inelegant and provincial. He reflected that it was a good thing he didn't go out into society more often. It was going to be hard enough to explain her to the few people he did see. Perhaps he would be able to pretend she was a distant cousin, visiting him for... for a whole year...

She spoke again, in an odd, strangled tone. "So when... how soon should we..." She seemed unable to complete the sentence.

He had no desire to say it out loud either. "How soon would suit you?" he asked instead.

"The sooner the better, I suppose. Sooner begun is sooner done."

"Agreed." He didn't want to give her time to back out of it. He watched her covertly, while he pretended to stare into his beer. He let a length of silence pass, so it wouldn't sound as though it mattered too much to him. "When, then?"

"Day after tomorrow? Sunday? I don't want my mother to have time to make a big hoo-ha out of it."

"Fine," he said, trying not to let his relief show in his voice. "Have your things ready to go by tomorrow night and I'll arrange to have them sent on ahead to Four Winds."

She nodded dully, not even questioning that he knew where she lived, or that he could manage to transport all her belongings to his home.

"I'll take care of the rings," he continued. "You just meet me at the circle. You can get there all right?"

She nodded again.

"What time suits you?"

"Whenever."

"Four o'clock then." He saw that she had begun to cry again, silently and in earnest, her tears spilling over and running down her cheeks.

"Weasley!" he said sharply, afraid she was about to change her mind. "This is not the end of the world."

When she did not reply, he reached out and touched her chin, tipping her face roughly so she had to look at him.

"It is a year of our lives, do you hear me? A year. We can do anything for a year." He thought she looked utterly defeated.

"We can do anything for a year," she echoed hollowly. "Well, I guess we'll just see about that, won't we?"