Note: I know it's been a while. You should know, if you're still reading this, that I only write FanFic when my real life writing becomes too hectic and stresses me out but I still need to make my daily word count.
Also, trying to write in passive voice is hard. I so don't do that anymore.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
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Chapter Twenty Four –
"The ring—it's been bewitched." I choked on the gulp of air I had been bringing into my lungs—the ring was bewitched? By whom?
"To do what?"
"To make you love him." She replied, frowning as she finally looked at me, "I don't think it was your betrothed."
"Then who?"
"His mother."
Despite how increasingly unladylike it was, I slumped back into the chair. My mind was racing—Bewitched? Mrs. Flint? "I don't think you know what you're saying," my voice sounded strange to my own ears.
I'd expected my own mother was up to something, but to suggest that the Flints, too, were playing her game?
"I am so sorry, darling, so very sorry." That's all I need to hear for it to be confirmed.
Something in her tone made me look up. I studied her expression in detail—lips pressed together tightly, eyes turned slightly down but lids opened. She looked baffled and upset, the right amount of heartbroken and embarrassed.
"But…why?"
"You see people fretting about their whole lives—which job? Which house? But the most important decision one makes is their spouse. There is nothing in our world more advantageous than marriage. Blood first," Gigi paused. Blood first? I've heard that my whole life but never from her lips. Clearing her throat, she continued, "It's what we honor—blood. The right family's heirs are coveted just for that reason."
It was very difficult not to scoff at her choice of word—the right Family's heirs—I was an heir? Just like the ball, all I was groomed to be was a fixture on someone's mantle.
"So you're saying that the Flints are using magic to influence me to marry Marcus?" But what about the tea that night? Did they somehow have something to do with that, as well?
"You can answer that for yourself. How much clearer is your mind without the ring?"
The blood drained from my face, my palms slickened with a thin layer of perspiration. My mind did feel clear, much clearer than it had since I'd returned from the states with Draco—just the thought pains me. It felt like years ago that I'd been with Draco, waking up to Draco every day, pretending to be with him.
"Surely, my parents have to know."
"I'm sure that they do." Always the lady, I watched as Gigi folded her hands over her lap.
"So they are working together?" I finally voiced the question aloud even if I was positive I didn't want to hear the answer. "Why would they do that?"
"If you would stop interrupting," she tossed a brow up, keeping her features light, "I would finish explaining."
"I'm sorry. You were saying…?"
"Things within our world are nothing if not traditional. It is our traditions that uphold our society, and we do well to respect them." I've heard this from Gigi, my parents, every one I've known. "The Coming of Age Ball exists not to create an arrangement of marriage, but to solidify a pre-existing arrangement that would have been drafted in the child's infancy. Once the parents of the destined couple are in agreement that the arrangement will move forward, uniting the two families, it is custom to influence the bride and groom as much as necessary to see success."
Gigi took a deep breath before she added, "To maintain the bloodline of our society, sometimes drastic measures our necessary to uphold blood purity. It all is about keeping our world sacred, inclusive."
"So you agree with bewitching teenagers so they get married?"
"Heavens, no! But times are dark. I can understand the concern of keeping the bloodline pure and the actions one would take to see it through."
Her words chilled me, despite the balmy July weather. Did she agree with how Mum had handled the Emma situation? Trying to bewitch Emma into marrying a pureblood for the sake of keeping our family pure? What did that even mean—pure?
What didn't make sense though, no matter how I tried to turn things around was why my Mum would feel the need to bewitch me. I didn't have to marry Flint, I'd marry Draco without a second thought, no magic needed as interference.
Why didn't my mother want me to marry Draco?
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I want you to be happy."
"It would have been better to let me have suffered in ignorance. If I hadn't known my feelings were false, I never would have questioned them."
"Ignorance isn't bliss, don't they say that? You will only be happy when it's true. Give yourself the future you deserve, the love you deserve."
"But I don't love Flint."
"Do you think that you could, one day?"
I shook my head, "Is he who you would have picked for me?"
She shrugged a shoulder, non-committal, "I have had years to consider the match."
What Draco said was true? The match had been planned? Why did they let me fall in love with Draco, when all this heartache could've been avoided?
"I can't put this ring back on, not in good conscience." It's the most agreeable way I could think of to tell my grandmother exactly my opinion. I couldn't put the ring back on knowing what I knew now, knowing that I was going to be pushed into the corner with Flint no matter how hard I fought it, free will stripped with enchantments.
"We'll take it to a friend of the family—very talented curse breaker. I believe he's in France with his soon to be new wife."
Lunch, somehow, managed to pass in normalcy. Gigi sent a fire-note to the family friend, Bill, who almost immediately responded with an address we could meet him at in three hours. I wondered how much Gigi offered him for the job…
The witch at the salon does a lovely job, despite having begged me to consider taking the color even lighter. As much as I hated to admit, I understood her point of view. In heavily accented French, "It will warm you right up!" In only an hour, my hair is returned to its jet black hue. I admired the results in the mirror for minutes longer than necessary—a trait heavily encouraged from my mother, from a very young age.
As I study myself, I couldn't help but picture Draco in my mind, beside me in the mirror. The blonder tones did wonders for my complexion, it was inarguable. But the darker hair? Well it made me look just right for Draco, just right next to Draco's pale, pale blonde head. With it back to black, it was nearly too close to Flint's own dark brown mop. It was visually unstimulating.
I felt more like myself as we left the salon, hurrying off to meet Bill at just the sort of place you'd expect to meet a curse breaker. Bleak, dark, grimy windows. The whole place is shrouded in an air of dampness, though nothing seemed to be lending moisture.
Gigi turned sharply from the door, heading towards a table in the back. A figure sat in the corner, his back to us. Tall and lean, I could tell even as he's sitting, long red hair is tied loosely in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Muggle clothes hugged his frame—a dark brown jacket, worn denim.
She takes the seat by his side, leaving me the seat opposite him. I keep my gaze down, focused on the uneven stone flooring as I pulled out the rickety wooden chair and sit. Scooting forward is more complicated than I expected but managed successfully on the fourth attempt.
Bill stared at me throughout the whole process but I don't meet his gaze until I'm well seated at the table, glancing up to finish surveying him.
"Gigi," I muttered, my voice still loud enough to be heard, "That man is a Weasley."
"And the only Weasley who knows the truth of his brother's self-exile."
"Emma? You've seen Emma?"
He nodded.
"I've tried to write her so many times over the years but the owls have never known where to find her," I said, amazed.
"She and my brother, Charlie, live in Romania. That's as much as I'm sure of. He studies dragons, you know?"
I shake my head because I didn't. It wasn't hard to imagine Emma, feisty and fiery, falling in love with a man who had the temperaments necessary to study, work with dragons. She was like a dragon.
"How is she? Is she happy?"
Bill smiled, "Unbelievably so."
"That's all I could ask for," I sighed.
"I'm sure you have more questions, and I wish that I could answer them but I am strapped for time. Can't stay in one place for too long. The ring?"
"Right," I tossed the fog from my brain, murdered the questions and reached into my pocket to pull out the emerald. Carefully, ever so carefully, I handed it over.
He studied the ring in the dim lighting, turning it this way and that. He pulled a stopper from a pocket, dropping a small amount on the emerald. The stone flashed red. Another bottle is pulled from yet another pocket and this time he dunked the whole ring in. Sparks shot from the surface of the liquid, one, two, three—Bill pulled it out glowing, plunking it on the table in front of us.
The metal glowed white-hot like it'd been dunked in flames.
"Try it on." He suggested.
"Um…" He spent sixty seconds washing the ring with tonics and expected me to just slip it back onto my finger?
"Trust him, Hayley."
Gigi's eyes are steadying, encouraging. I reached forward and picked it up, slipping it back onto my left hand.
"Well?"
"I feel the same."
"Thank you," Gigi gushed, handing over a leather pouch to Bill. "Congratulations on the wedding."
"Anytime. I'll pass that along to Fleur."
Bill apparated from the spot just in front of us, quite rudely so.
"Did he say Fleur?"
"Yes, he's marrying the Delacour girl." The Dealcour's lived next to Gigi, part Veela. Fleur was a few years ahead of me at Beauxbaton's. I wonder if she met Bill when she was at Hogwarts for the Triwizarding tournament…
"We mustn't dawdle," Gigi looked up from her watch. "We have to return by dinner time with a suitable engagement party dress."
Shopping is one of my favorite past times, but I don't seem to enjoy it today at all. We go from shop to shop but my mind can't stop spinning what Gigi had said to me over lunch—traditional families bewitching, cursing, hexing, all to see a wedding unfold. I remembered what Draco said, our last day in the states—that I'd been promised to Flint since our childhood because of what happened with Emma.
But what was wrong with Draco?
Something else he said then stuck out, never having focused on it before: blackmailing Flint. Would we be able to pull it off?
Elated with the idea of sabotaging my way out of the engagement, a bounce appeared in my step. The next store we walked in, I actually found myself looking at the garments on the hangers. Haute couture, fresh from the runways. An Ellie Saab dress caught my attention, nude and black. Empire waisted, the dress boasted long sleeves and a high neckline—all in the same skin toned sheer fabric. The whole dress was polka dotted with tiny black crystals. Giant patterns were created with lace and the same crystals, so you couldn't tell which parts were sheer and which parts were solid.
"This," I tenderly placed a hand on the bodice, admiring the beadwork. "This is it."
"I couldn't agree more," Gigi replied. "Miss? We'll take this one."
As the shop assistant is packing away the dress and the subsequent shoes Gigi insisted on buying, something new occurs to me—Gigi the purist was on a first name basis with a Weasley? Gigi the purist was still in touch with my outcasted, forbidden-to-be-spoken-of, 'Mudblood' loving sister?
But what about what she'd said over crepes? Everything is about maintaining our bloodline, keeping it pure.
Wait a second…the Weasley's—they're purebloods. They love muggles, that can't be denied but the parents—Maisy? Arnold? They're both purebloods. Emma married a pureblood wizard. Her children will be pure.
It's clear—she approved of Emma's choice. Is that all she wanted from me? To keep the bloodline pure and be happy?
If that's what she was trying to say earlier, then that meant…Gigi wanted me to be with Draco.