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silverandbone · 10 months

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The Arrangement | Prologue

Word Count: 2,978

Warnings: General Harry Potter warnings, and discussions of blood purity and bigotry (I don’t know what you’d expect, given the context, but if that bothers you please don’t read), also there is a brief mention of sexual harassment, and also of physical abuse on the part of Walburga Black, and drunkenness/drinking, also, and I’m not sure if this needs a warning or not but I’ll put it here anyway, this entire story revolves around an arranged marriage between two people who aren’t thrilled with the idea but can’t do much about it inspite of being adults.

A/N: Parts of this story have been edited and now contain mentions and brief descriptions of sex and sexual activity. MDNI, adults proceed at own discretion.

The Arrangement Masterlist

Growing up as the eldest daughter of an ancient pureblood family, there was an understanding from a very young age that you would be watched. Every move you made, every stray comment, every piece of clothing you wore, would be observed, and judged. From that judgement an opinion would be formed, an opinion that could not be easily changed, and that would determine how your life, as well as the lives of your siblings – your older brother, and later your younger sister – would go.

It was this very opinion, in fact, that your reputation was based on. As far as anyone was concerned, you could have killed a man in cold blood, and still be seen as a respectable young lady from the right sort of family with a good upbringing, so long as you fit into your pre-determined place in society.

In order to make absolutely certain that your family name remained in the good graces of the so-called sacred 28, there were certain things that you needed to do.

When you were only three years old, your mother put you in ballet lessons,

“To help you become more graceful.” she had said when you asked why. In time, you came to enjoy those lessons, if only because they were one of the very few times in your life that no one could judge you for willingly spending time with muggles, whom you found to be quite interesting.

After all, it was of the utmost importance that the children of the 28 were given the very best, taught by the very best, and in some situations, that meant an exception had to be made. Women like Walburga Black and her cousin Druella were less than impressed by this.

Other things that you needed to learn, however, were able to be taught by witches and wizards, and so, your etiquette lessons, and your horseback riding lessons, and really, just about everything in between that you needed to learn in order to be a respectable young lady from the right sort of family with a good upbringing, was taught to you by wizarding tutors approved of and used by the members of the 28.

The thing about those lessons though, was that you could usually count on your tutors to let you have fun, to some extent.

You and your sister would often be given permission to go on trail rides through the forest on your family’s property, so long as you had a proper chaperone.

You and your brother, before you went to Hogwarts, were allowed to act out various scenes from your history of magic textbooks, usually resulting in a few minor scrapes and bruises when one of you inevitably tripped and fell (usually it was your brother), causing your mother to rush out of either the library or the drawing room and make sure you were both alright. Occasionally your little sister would toddle out after her and start giggling and pointing at the mess that was made, and everyone would dissolve into fits of laughter. And all three of you would often sneak off to the kitchens and help the house elves or the kitchen maids with decorating cookies or cakes meant for later, and of course, you had to try a few, just to make sure they were good enough to be served.

It wasn’t any of these things that really bothered you about your life or your family. In fact, you lived an incredibly comfortable life. Your father worked for the ministry and made a good amount of money – enough that your family had an estate in the country, and a townhome in London, both fully staffed with both house elves and human servants alike. Your mother spent her time volunteering at various charitable organizations, hosting dinner parties, and having beautiful dresses for any occasion made. If your mother wasn’t addressing invitations in the library, or having a dress of the latest fashion fitted for some upcoming event or other in her dressing room, she was usually able to be found in the drawing room embroidering, or reading, or entertaining your baby sister with adventure stories and beautiful sparks, just the way she had for you and your brother when you were children.

Your brother was the eldest, but not by much. He was only a few years older than you, and the two of you had been incredibly close growing up. It was the two of you against the world, especially when one of you needed an excuse to get out of an event hosted by a member of the 28.

Your sister, your darling baby sister, was thirteen years younger than you. She was always the wild child. Brave, and adventurous. She lived to cause trouble, always wreaking havoc on your hosts at dinner parties and galas. Never anything too awful, mostly it was harmless fun, but the one time she decided to let a few pixies loose in the Black family’s ballroom during their annual black and white gala was a complete and utter disaster. It was lucky for your family that Orion, strange man that he was, found the entire situation rather funny. You didn’t want to even think about what might have happened had he not.

What really bothered you about your life, was how very carefully you had to make your decisions. Your family was loving, and kind. Gracious, and generous. They didn’t agree with much of the ideologies of the rest of the 28. They did, however, have a sense of self-preservation that was common among Slytherins.

While your parents abhorred many of their peers’ actions, while they may have raised their children far differently than them, there was only so much they could do to protect you and your siblings from the realities of life with the 28. You knew that, eventually, certain things that were expected of respectable young ladies from the right sort of families, and good upbringings, would be expected of you.

You were only 15, your sister almost three, when your mother sat you both down on the sofa in her favourite drawing room, and told you that, one day, you would be expected to marry an upstanding young gentleman from the right sort of family with a good strong upbringing. That you would be expected to help to raise the next generation of the 28. She explained this all with a misty, faraway look in her eye. As if she were remembering a time so many years ago when her own mother had told her the same thing.

It was the closest you had ever come to rebelling. You wanted to scream and shout, tell the world that it wasn’t fair that you should have your whole future decided for you, simply because of the family you were born in. Instead, you had politely excused yourself to your bedroom. You had sat down at your writing desk with the practised grace of a young lady from the right sort of family with a good upbringing, and poured your heart out to your best friend, Regulus, via letter.

The next morning, at breakfast, you received a response. Regulus had done his best to try and comfort you, but he knew, much like anyone else with a similar upbringing did, that there was nothing he could do to help you. Besides, he had written, the earliest you could be married off was 18. That was still three years off, and even then, there was no guarantee that your parents would arrange for that to happen so soon after your graduation. Likely they would wait a few years, as many parents had in recent years, in hopes that you would find and marry an upstanding young gentleman from the right sort of family with a good strong upbringing, without their intervention.

When you showed your mother the letter, she agreed that it was the most likely course of action. No one wanted to see their children miserable, after all, and you had always had a good head on your shoulders. You’d likely have nothing to worry about.

And so, the subject was dropped.

When you finally did turn 18 you were able to celebrate your graduation and receiving the highest marks in Slytherin for your graduation class, with just a few close friends and a couple of drinks at a bar in London. No fiancé in sight.

Regulus gave you a bracelet, an intricately designed silver one resembling a snake. You gave him a card signed by your family and a watch. It had the date of your graduation engraved on the back, and the first few lines of a favorite poem. It was probably then, that Regulus first started to realize how he truly felt for you. It was only later that he regrated not telling you.

At 19, you were offered a job at the Daily Profit. Just a short twice-weekly gossip column, chronicling some of the juicier bits of information you were privy to as a member of one of the 28.

Shortly after your twentieth birthday, with still no sign of any upcoming engagement, your editor offered you a more permanent spot at the Profit as an investigative journalist. With the new job, came an increase in pay, and you were able to move into your own apartment in London not too far from your office.

Three days before you turned twenty-one, your older brother announced his engagement to a pretty witch who had been in your dorm during your seventh year. She was a half-blood, raised by her pureblooded father after her mother’s untimely death when she was a child. After the announcement was made in that morning’s edition of the Profit, your family gathered at your parent’s townhome, and spent the evening together in the living room, waiting for some form of retaliation, be it letters or uninvited visitors hoping to announce their displeasure with the match. Her family, however, was wealthy, and her father a pureblood from a well-respected family. The match was excepted, and only a few short months later, they were married.

You turned 22 without incident, and while maybe, you should have been a little bit upset to see all your friends getting married and starting families of their own, ensuring the future of the 28, you couldn’t help but thank Morgana that you weren’t among them. You knew that, in a few years, they would be absolutely miserable if they weren’t already, and it only became more apparent with each wedding you attended.

When you were 23, Walburga began to take an interest in your personal life. She’d ask questions about when you planned on getting married and to whom while the two of you were at social events. It was usually at this point that Regulus would gracefully cut in and ask you to dance, or your younger sister would lock her arm with yours and declare that if you were to leave her alone for one moment more, she would set fire to the curtains if it meant keeping herself entertained.

By 24 you had received a promotion at work and had decided to focus on your career more fully. There had been something dark brewing in the shadows for quite some time, and whispers of a return to the dark arts among some of the families had begun to spread. Some questioned your family’s standing as proud pureblooded Slytherins after your brave Gryffindor sister made a few unwise comments at a few too many events. You and your brother were quick to remind them that, yes, she was a Gryffindor, but that meant little more than a lack of a filter when her opinions were challenged, and an inability to understand, at times, what constituted appropriate conversation at social events. And besides, who didn’t expect an eleven-year-old who had been sneaking sips of champagne when she thought no one was paying attention to not have loose lips?

For your twenty-fifth birthday, your sister-in-law hosted a small get-together. There was a nice dinner and a cake from your favourite bakery. Your closest friends and family all wishing you a happy birthday. Your parents had given you a delicate gold watch that had belonged to your grandmother. Your brother had given you a new typewriter, he smirked as you unwrapped it commenting that since you did so much writing outside of work, you might like something to make that just the littlest bit easier. Regulus gave you a first edition of one of your favourite muggle novels, a feat made even more impressive with how nosy you knew Walburga could be, and he blushed when you kissed him on the cheek, his heart skipping a beat.

Your sister gave you an oval-shaped locket that she had found in a muggle antique shop the two of you frequented together. She had placed a picture of the two of you from a few years back at your brother’s wedding, both of you smiling brightly as she moved to whisper something to you and then you both dissolving into fits of giggles. There might have been champagne involved.

Your last gift that day wasn’t so much a gift in the traditional sense, and it wasn’t really for you specifically. Your sister-in-law and brother had decided to ask you to be the godmother to their first child, handing you a corny t-shirt they’d found at a muggle clothing shop, on the front of the green shirt were the words ‘world’s best godmother’.

At 26, one of your colleagues, a young man you had known in school, asked you out for dinner. You might have agreed if it weren’t for his reputation among your female friends and colleagues as the sort who expected too much from a first date and didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

The prideful fool should have known better, given the distasteful expression on your face, but he continued to push, until you had your father call in a favour with your editor, an old friend of his from his days at Hogwarts, and had him sent off on an assignment to somewhere he was unlikely to return from. A bit extreme perhaps, though it certainly ensured he never bothered anyone again, and it made for a much quieter office.

It was at 27 that your life was set in a very different direction than you would have expected after the last few years. In fact, had you known this would be the main point of discussion at your monthly luncheon with your mother, sister, and sister-in-law, you likely would have come up with some doubtlessly brilliant reason for being quite unable to make it this time ‘round, and for them to please except your apologies; most likely it would have been something to do with the paper, or perhaps your faucet had a leak and the only time the plumber was available was, unfortunately, at the very time of your usual lunch. Of course, that wasn’t what happened. And you didn’t know that only three weeks after having been invited for drinks with your dear friend Regulus in celebration of the both of you reaching the ripe old age of 27 without being forced into a marriage like so many of your peers, you would be sitting at this very table, watching your mother tell you that you were to marry Sirius Black. The elder brother of the same friend whom you had enjoyed those celebratory drinks with, rather too soon. The same elder brother of said friend whom you had never officially met. Not even at events hosted by the 28.

In fact, the only things you knew about the man were by word of mouth.

His brother told you about how they had been close as children and drifted apart as they got older. About how he had been horribly mistreated by their mother after he was sorted into Gryffindor, how he was the rebellious oldest son, the disappointment of the most noble and ancient house of Black. How he hated anyone who had been sorted into Slytherin and assumed the worst about them by default.

All of this was told to you one night after Regulus got a little bit too drunk following one of his mother’s episodes. You had come over the second he called from the payphone outside his apartment. Had helped treat the wounds he had received from his mother’s use of the Crutacius curse and had seen the scars from past abuse. You had held him as he cried, gently stroking his dark hair, and doing your best to comfort the man, the both of you drinking glass after glass of firewhisky. He had kissed you then. So drunk he had no misgivings about crossing that line, and you had kissed back.

That night, as you both lay on his sofa, stripped bare, chests heaving, lips swollen, and bodies aching from your previous activities both of you knew that as much as you loved each other, as much as you both might have enjoyed your time together, and would hold such memories close, it could never happen again. Regulus would not subject you to his family by marrying you. And neither of you could take that chance of ruining what you already had by continuing a physical relationship. Merlin forbid you end up pregnant at any point in time, and the scandal that would follow you both to your graves.

That night, the night you learned the most about that man who was now your fiancé, was also the night your heart broke. The night that it had well and truly been realized by both you and Regulus that neither of you could be with the one person who could offer the other some form of happiness in the cruel world you lived in.

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