Houses Comp - AU piece about Hermione marrying Draco for his money. Of course.

Ravenclaw, HoH - piece written for Year 6, Themed, Prompt: Condemn, WC: 2043

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"Miss Granger. Mr Malfoy. I now pronounce you man and wife."

The Minister clapped his flabby hands together, sweat flew in our direction, and the proverbial weight fell onto my shoulders. Married. Heck. What the heck have I done? I look at the man standing across from me, his pale blonde hair swept back tidily, and his face whiter than a sheet. I know he's feeling exactly the same as I am. Condemned. Trapped. Alone in a room that is meant for faith and for love.

"You may kiss the bride."

He's looking at me saying come on, Hermione, we have to. Grey eyes, pleading with me, even though I know he is experiencing the exact same crushing sensation on his chest as I am. The anxiety pulling at every sinewy muscle. The sensation of drowning. Shit. Draco Malfoy leans in, nose first, his lips second, and I know I have to meet him halfway. I have to look like I want to kiss him. The kiss is another demonstration of our damning.

It all started several months ago. Malfoy moved into my office - I work in Legal Claims for the Ministry - with this ridiculous box of items he'd hauled from his desk at home. I teased him relentlessly. A lot of people thought it was flirting. It might have been to start with, unconsciously. He used to comment that I was wasted in Legal Claims, that I belonged somewhere bigger and better, which obviously made my tiny ego grow a little more.

We started taking lunch together, and I was a little more distanced from my old friends. Ron and Harry were away a lot on Auror business, running with wands and desperately trying to retain their glory days. I felt that jealous pang of being left behind - the one that Ron must have done while Harry and I continued the quest to destroy the Horcruxes. I loved them, of course, but I couldn't help but want more than my non-impact work.

"If you hate your job so much, why don't you do something else?" Malfoy asked one day, half a biscuit in his mouth and coffee in his left hand. "You complain about it all the time - it's actually painfully exhausting. Why not, I don't know, ask to move?"

"I can't just ask to move, that's so rude," I argue, glaring back at him. Because how dare he have such a carefree attitude towards life. My bitterness flared up inside me, wanting to have that same way of thinking.

"You're Hermione Granger. You can do whatever the fuck you like."

"Malfoy!"

"I heard it from you first."

The single time I had sworn so crudely, and that was the time he listened to me. But I thought about it significantly more after that. About having something more. I would never directly ask for a different job - that's just not me - but certainly I could ask for something more. I started researching old articles on what I'd been interested since I found out about Elfish rights. The ways they had been treated; the ways in which wizards had denied the rights of other magical beings for so long. It was honest work, so different from the Legal Claims. There, I would weasel my way out of legalities; try and get people to pay us for damage the Ministry had incurred. But Rights. That's where my heart was.

Only one problem. I needed money.

"No, I'm afraid we need you to remain in Claims, Miss Granger." When I asked my boss why, he replied simply, "We can't afford to lose people in our team." My heart hurt a little when he said that. Unfeeling eyes, dipping his quill into an almost dried-up ink pot, completely disregarding. Those words meant that I was of no worth other than manpower. They meant that I wasn't glorious or special or needed, but required simply to perform a mundane task for someone else. For someone like me, when they hear that, and see Harry and Ron swaggering around the Auror office, it fills me with resentment. The Auror program was never really my calling – but that's where my two best friends were, and they were succeeding exponentially. And I was stuck.

After that, the weeks passed unbearably slowly. I spent my days reading through the mountainous bumf of reports, with Draco muttering at the desk beside mine. He would turn a page, sigh in exasperation, make a note, and continue reading. Like some sort of insane ritual, one the both of us were in attendance of.

As if by magic, two entire months had passed, and my working relationship with Draco had expanded to some sort of close friendship. Instead of taking my problems to my mother, or my best friends, I found myself confiding in him, relishing in watching his rather dramatic eyebrows dance across his face in surprise. There were things within the job that I was angry about – for example, a witch who demanded that we pay for her ten thousand galleon goblin-made suit of armour that had been stolen in the night – or the wizard who wanted compensation for a plant pot that had chased him twenty-seven miles. But I was also angry at Harry and Ron, who were frivolous with their high income and their glory. Harry and Ginny were happier than they had ever been, having rekindled their own love in some strange and passionate reconciliation which was frankly quite disturbing to any onlookers. Ron pranced around with women who threw themselves at him, too exhausted by the idea of a relationship. Always scared of commitment.

Then there was me. Loner, loser, and complicated wreck. Friends with the devil, and lusting after a different life.

"Draco told us you were looking to fund some new research – is that correct?" Narcissa Malfoy asked, lifting her goblet to her lips, five months after my initial request to the Ministry. Somehow, I was there in Malfoy Manor again, caught in afternoon tea with Draco and his parents. Time had rushed by in a crazy fashion, by which I was suddenly being introduced to Narcissa and Lucius, and they were rather graciously inviting me into their lavish home. I felt the wave of nausea in the entrance hall, as I expected, but it passed with Draco's light hand on my back and the warmth of the fire in the next room.

"Yes," I replied, sitting up a little straighter. "Unfortunately, the Ministry wouldn't allow me to change course."

"It's not exactly a course it you're going nowhere," Draco muttered. "Sorry."

I shrug. "It's true. They told me all I was worth is manpower." Narcissa scowled appropriately, setting down her goblet on a mahogany table to her left.

"So, you gave up?" I blanched, taken aback by her cutting words. Of course, I should have expected them. "My apologies. What is the research on?"

"Rights of Elves and other magical beings." The Malfoys looked between themselves, as though sharing half a conversation without my knowledge. I felt as if I should fill the uncomfortable silence with something – and certainly not singing. "You know, how wizards have oppressed Elves, and how Centaurs are treated poorly, and the whole incident of half-breed naming and disregarding… Well, you know." I stopped, seeing them watching me with intensity. I swallowed thickly.

"We think there is a way we can help each other out," Narcissa began.

Then Lucius, from his stoic position, shifted forwards, about to engage in conversation.

"You need money, yes?" I nodded. "And our image is not the best these days." I laughed in agreement. "But we still have more than sufficient funding for our lives, luxury, and other business ventures. So, think of this as a business venture."

"Sorry, Mr Malfoy, but what are you suggesting?"

"Marry Draco." What? "Marry our son, Draco. We will pay for the wedding, of course. Everything on that end will be dealt with. In return, you will get enough money, and more, to fund your research." I glanced in Draco's direction, his pale face more like death than ever before. His eyes were gazing blankly in a different direction. For a moment, our eyes met, but his father was still talking. "It will be good for Draco to be seen with you, and to be seen supporting your Rights Movement. Beneficial to us as a family, and we will continue to fund your project as long as you wish us to."

"Can I think about it? Talk to Draco about it, maybe?"

"We'll leave the room while you discuss," Narcissa interrupted her husband, standing briskly and dragging her husband from the room. Draco waited, frozen to his spot in the chair. I watched him, listening to the silence that surrounded us in that moment. It felt as though my life was weighted to this moment. And I was weighted down from this spot.

He breathed a sigh. "You don't have to agree."

"But the money…" Draco ran a hand through his hair, standing up. He was stressed, and I could tell immediately. That shocked me. "This is insane, right? I can't actually marry you for money. You can't possibly want to marry me – my image isn't that great."

"Hermione, it's really not that. It wasn't my… Look, you need the money."

As it turned out, it was horribly difficult to argue with that fact. I did need the money. And I was not one to shy away from helping other people – even Draco Malfoy, who I had grown weirdly close to over the last few months of working together. The wedding was planned fast, before I had even been publicly proposed to.

"Yes," I choked out, when Draco was down on one knee, smiling, with a dead look in his eyes. I didn't know whether he meant it, or if he didn't want to have meant it. It was like some sort of strange paradox. I was dying, condemned by each decision I made. Condemned to marrying Draco, and saying that I loved him, and that I wanted to spend my life with him. Of course, in an odd way I did want to spend my life with him, but I never possibly imagined that I would be marrying him, and certainly not in a way that made me feel as though I was prostituting myself.

Harry and Ron smiled their way through the ceremony, happy that I had found someone, but less than pleased that the someone was Draco Malfoy. They had settled into lives of their own, increasingly more distant than they had been since Auror training began. When I took a year to go back to Hogwarts, it was like Harry and Ron were so far away I could barely remember their faces. And now we were here.

Three quarters of the way through a personal bottle of Bordeaux and people were still congratulating me on my wedding, hugging Draco and claiming that it was the most wonderful pairing. I didn't understand why.

"What now?" I asked, as we drove off to our honeymoon destination, backs to our friends and family.

"What do you mean?"

"I've got my money. You've got the marriage. What… Next?"

He sat in silence for several minutes, clearly thinking over his life that has become ruined by my choice to accept his false hand in marriage. I waited. Because what comes next? Did we continue living a lie like this, or did we expand the lie and have children? The last thought in particular is one I couldn't bear to consider.

"We go on living as a happily married couple, I guess," he replied eventually. "You get to do your research. I'll be a faithful husband and desperately hope that you stay faithful as well. Society repairs. Everyone goes on living."

"You hate my friends."

"I used to hate you."

"You don't now?"

The sun glowed bright in the distance, resting on a golden horizon. Draco Malfoy turned to me, smiling again, as he did so often. But it was not the smile I remembered. It was melancholy. As if I was breaking his heart with every blue second we spent together.

"Of course not, no."

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