Author's Note: So. I'm going pretty shameless fairytale style for this one, and that means fairytale rules. So yes, a girl can run off with a guy she has known for 3 minutes and it can be a happily ever after. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Hogwarts Owls
Fairytales - Task 3: Write about a person of high social standing who flees from her family to escape marriage to a close relative. Include their life after the escape. Return to family is optional.
WC: (2,087)
Extra Prompts: (character) Astoria Greengrass, (word) sorrow, (month) December
Pokémon Trading Card Challenge
Milotic (Silver) - Write a Veela!AU for a character other than Fleur, Victorie or Dominique
Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognise.
Forgiveness
Astoria smiled, soft and alluring as she descended the grand staircase. The ballroom was decorated lavishly, mirrors hung on every wall reflecting the warm light of the massive chandelier and many sconces around the room. Jewels glittered and flowers stood in every corner, their intoxicating scent mixing with the delicious smells that floated over from the buffet table. A four-piece quartet played elegant music in one corner accompanied by the finest singer in the land.
She could feel every eye in the room and knew that they were all watching her. Nearly every male eye looked at her hungrily, their positions shifting into that of hunters sizing up their prey. Jealousy radiated from the other women, beautiful as they were all dressed in their finery each knew that they could never match her.
Astoria had genetics on her side, her mother was a Veela, the most beautiful Queen to grace the Kingdom in centuries, and she had passed that lucky charm down onto her eldest daughter. Her posture was graceful, her hair a sheet of golden silk, her eyes bright and challenging, sultry and sweet. One pale hand ghosted above the railing of the staircase and the other clutched the fabric of her emerald green dress, the colour of her house.
At the bottom of the stairs her father waited, a mere wizard he was as dazzled by his daughter as he was by his wife, but he smiled proudly at her one hand extended towards her. She smiled, warm and genuine, as she took her father's hand and let him lead her onto the dancefloor. It was customary for a girl to dance with her father first one her 18th birthday. It was supposed to symbolise that she was taking her last steps in his shelter and moving onto the steps she would take as an adult, but really that was just made up to make the young women feel better. The real purpose of this dance was to display Astoria in all her glory to the numerous suitors in attendance tonight. As a Princess of the Blood it was her duty to make an advantageous match and secure the future of her kingdom.
But the joy that Astoria felt as she was spun about the ballroom, the delight she felt in being the centre of attention, was quickly dampened as her father ended the dance in front of the suitor he thought suited her best. The one that would create the best ties and strengthen the Veela blood running through her veins. Her cousin, son of her mother's brother and heir to the throne of the neighbouring kingdom, Alexi.
Alexi was handsome enough, and like Astoria he knew it, but it wasn't his blatant arrogance that put her off, nor was it the fact that he was her cousin, it was not so uncommon for the royal families to inbreed, no it was the fact that Alexi didn't have eyes for her. Or any other woman. Not only was it a blow that her considerable arrogance and vanity couldn't quite stomach, but the thought of being forever trapped in a loveless, passionless marriage to a man she knew would cheat on her was a sentence she could not face, not even for her kingdom.
So she danced with Alexi, but only the first. She did her best to quietly and politely assure him that there would be no match, no matter what her father wanted, but every time she managed to escape long enough to dance with another suitor her father would reappear and talk loudly about how happy he was about the imminent nuptials.
Eventually, Astoria managed to escape the leers of the men, the glares of the women and the insistence of her father, slipping out a side door she took a few steps into the cold December night, looking out over the darkened gardens.
"I'm sure the birthday girl shouldn't look so stressed on her special day."
Astoria whirled round with a gasp at the silky voice, her skirts swirling around her. A tall, broad figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. "Who are you?" she demanded, her voice laced with the authority that came from having servants since one was born.
The man stepped forward into the light and Astoria struggled not to gasp again. His face was pale, his jaw chiselled and his hair as pale as moonlight but it was his eyes, clear, grey and dark with hunger that made Astoria's breath catch in her throat. The stranger swept into a deep, graceful bow. "Draco Malfoy, a concerned citizen. At your service."
"Malfoy as in, Prince?" Astoria asked.
"Duke, actually. The royal line is passed through the female line in my family and currently my Aunt Bellatrix is in line to inherit. Though if she and Uncle Rodolphus don't get, uh, busy quickly, I am next up."
Astoria laughed, "you know, I don't think you're supposed to say it quite so blatantly to people."
Draco flashed her a cheeky smile and moved to lean against the balcony railing. He looked down at her, his smile softening. "Why so sad?"
Astoria felt her own smile slide right off her face and with a sigh she turned back to look out over the darkened plants and trees. "I really shouldn't say, it isn't very lady-like of me."
"Well, I said something I shouldn't have, so if you promise not to tell anyone what I said, I'll promise to do the same for you?"
She looked up at him, her eyes soft and unguarded. She felt drawn to this man in a way that she had never felt before. Normally she was the hunter, she tossed her prey aside because she knew that she was the most adored, the most wanted person in the room, but the look in his eyes spoke of more than just her physical charms. It was like he looked past the Veela, to the human inside, and he even liked what he saw there. "I-" she opened her mouth and stuttered, feeling a blush warm her cheeks for the first time in a long time. He nodded, urging her on. "It's just that my father, he wants me to do my duty to the Kingdom and make an advantageous match…"
"Understandable, you are a Princess."
"Yes, I know that I must do my duty, it's just, well. The suitor my father has in mind, is well…"
"Your cousin?"
Astoria sighed. "It's that obvious?"
"I don't think it could be any less obvious if your father wrote it in fireworks," Draco chuckled.
She groaned, a decidedly unladylike thing to do and dropped her head into her hands. "It's not even the blood ties that bother me! I know that it doesn't matter that we're cousins it's just that Alexi is, well he likes…"
"The royal prince is more like a royal princess?"
She laughed, "that was very tactful! You would make an excellent politician sir. I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed though. I just wish that my father would wake up and smell the, well, flowers I suppose. Instead he just wants to trap me in a loveless marriage where my spouse is guaranteed to cheat on me no matter how beautiful I am."
"I think a smile like that one could turn any man straight, and probably a few women not so straight," he commented very seriously.
Astoria blushed hard and laughed nervously. "We're back to inappropriate topics, sir. You must learn your proper court etiquette."
"You make me forget myself, your highness. You make me want to do, and say crazy things, things I know certainly wouldn't go down well with your father."
"Oh?" the sound was so breathless she was surprised it had made a noise at all. Draco had shifted so that Astoria was affectively pinned against the railing. Her hand rested gently on his warm, broad chest and she had to tilt her head up to look into his eyes, her own snagging on his soft, full mouth.
"Yes," he murmured his voice low and silky. "Like I want to tell you I've never met anyone like you before in my life and that you're so much more than the vain, veela princess you pretend to be. I can see your heart, my princess, and a fire burns in you that will not easily be tamed. And, I want to ask you…"
"What?" she blinked wide, dazed eyes. The proximity was really getting to her, her heart was racing in her chest and her breath came in short, sharp bursts.
"Let me be your knight in shining armour, let me rescue you my fiery princess. Come away with me, right now, back to my kingdom. Let me show you my family. Become my family." He closed the distance between them and captured her lips in a searing kiss.
"Yes."
X
It had taken nearly a decade, a wedding and a few funerals, for this day to come about but as Astoria sat upon the dais, a Malfoy Queen, she looked down at the decidedly aged, and humbled form of her father. The last time she had viewed him from such an elevated position had been the night of her birthday, but it was pride rather than sorrow that had shone in his eyes that night.
Now, days after the coronation, he had come to her.
"Father," Astoria said, her voice calm and controlled despite the emotions roiling inside of her. Draco, sat in his own throne beside her, squeezed her hand gently – a sign of support and comfort. They had been married almost as long as Astoria and her father had been estranged and it was certainly a loving and passionate marriage, everything she had never dreamed she'd find in a royal match.
"Astoria, my dear girl. I am sorry." He rose from his knees, his hair greyed but his presence still formidable. "I have been a stubborn, old fool all these years, holding desperately to his pride and instead letting my most precious object slip through my fingers. Can you ever forgive me?"
Her first instinct was no. Absolutely not. The way he had treated her in those months after she fled the castle were understandable, she had betrayed her King and country but the fact that this feud had lasted longer than both her children had been alive was something Astoria was not sure she could forgive.
He had been invited to the wedding, and both christenings, but she wasn't even sure he knew the name of his grandchildren.
Now this lonely man had come seeking her attention and the only reason he had cast aside his pride was because now she held something he wanted, safety from her kingdom. He wanted to come into her world and pop the little family bubble that she had created for herself here. Astoria had been happier in the last ten years with Draco and his people that she ever had been in the eighteen she spent as her father's daughter.
But she looked around, first at her children. Young as they were they still deserved to know where they came from, and then to her husband. Draco was inherently kind, soft-hearted even, and it pained him, perhaps even more than she, that he had been the cause of this feud. He wanted to see her happy, and they both knew the wound shaped like her father ran far deeper than she was willing to admit.
Then she looked at him, and saw that there were fewer laughter lines around his eyes and that he was shaking, ever so slightly. Her father was getting old, she realised, and there might not be another chance like this one to make her family whole again.
So she rose, gracefully, and descended the dais. She took the soft, weathered hands in her own as she had done so many years ago and smiled, warm and genuine, down at her father.
"I think, papa, that maybe I could."
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Much Love, MaryandMerlin x
