Chapter Text
13th October 2000
And there it was, the contract that would dictate the rest of his life. It had only been sixteen tedious months of negotiations to get to this point, not for him of course, but for his mother as a proxy for his father. ‘She is a suitable girl, Draco. Proper. Well-mannered. She will do nicely.’
It hadn’t mattered that they had barely spoken two words to each other throughout school, which meant that conversations now were awkward, and as far as he could tell, they had absolutely nothing in common, not that it mattered to his parents. You didn’t need to have anything in common in order to produce an heir, didn’t even need to like each other, or want to be married… Duty to family above all else, that was the way he had been raised. ‘The public needs to see something positive from our family, Draco, a wedding will do that, Astoria will do that.’
The betrothal contract, fifty-eight feet in length, sat waiting for only his signature. Astoria's curly letters gleamed back at him in shiny gold. Apparently, she hadn’t felt it necessary to accompany her father to this meeting. It was just business after all. “Draco.” His mother pushed with a tight smile. He hadn’t had a say when he had been pushed into taking over the family business. He hadn’t had a say when he had been shoved into an empty cell in Azkaban. He hadn’t had a say when he had been branded a Death Eater. And just like all the other choices in his life that had been made for him, he had always known that he wouldn’t have a say in who his future bride would be, but it didn’t make picking up the quill any easier.
He accepted Astoria, despite how dry their interactions were, almost stiff and clinical in nature, she seemed nice enough and he had hoped that she would leave him alone to live much of his life in peace. It was only a small comfort but a comfort all the same. He tried to keep his chest from tightening painfully and his hand from shaking as he signed his name to the parchment. His name swirled in gold ink back at him before it was swallowed up by a soft glow and vanished from the page entirely, leaving the youngest Greengrass’s name alone again. “What is going on here?” Her father glared at him and his mother. “I thought we had reached an agreement?!”
“We have, we have.” His mother placated but she couldn’t hide the slight frown of confusion. “Draco, sign it.” She urged more firmly under her breath.
“I did.” Draco snapped back before scrawling his signature again only to the same end, a third time, a fourth time. It didn’t matter, the space where his signature was supposed to go remained blank and ink-free. His chest was constricting now for a different reason and he couldn’t put his finger on it, distress? A suffocating weight continued to press down on him.
“This is unacceptable! We took a great risk by even entering into these negotiations. We have been more than fair given your family’s recent history, and now you try to embarrass us?! We won’t stand for it!” Cyril Greengrass stood, outraged before storming from Lucius' study, his robes flowing behind him.
“What did you do?!” His mother hissed in Draco’s direction before running after the older wizard, no doubt trying to promise rectification. What had he done? Their legal team had combed over every inch of the contract and no one had indicated that something was off. The only thing he could think of was the ugly snake that marred his skin, but that made no sense, other Death Eaters had been perfectly capable of entering into similar contracts.
He signed it again, knowing that it would do nothing. He was right except for the impending sense of dread that hung over him like a rain cloud. Narcissa Malfoy was visibly annoyed when she returned to the study with a huff. “Well, I hope you’re happy, whatever you did may have just cost us our chance—”
“I didn’t do anything,” Draco growled. He knew his mother was trying but more often than not it felt like a further strain on their already strained relationship. “Your idiot lawyers must have missed something.”
Narcissa eyed him briefly before softening her features, “You genuinely don’t know?”
“No, Mother, I genuinely do not.”
Narcissa seemed to accept that he was telling the truth. “You would think, given what we are paying them, that they could at least do their bloody jobs properly.” She grumbled, the bags under her eyes were more noticeable in the light of the fire, she was tired. Between the war and both his and Lucius’ trials and imprisonments, she had aged a decade in her appearance. Greys that she would have concealed previously were beginning to creep through, the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes were more pronounced and there was a perpetual stiffness to her shoulders as if she was carrying the weight of them all, not him. Narcissa attended to social matters, until such a time as Draco was wed and his wife could take over, but the family itself had been burdened atop his plate to carry.
He could feel it catching up to him. Theo had asked if he had been relieved to be released from prison but in actual fact, the last year and a half had been worse. Sure, Azkaban was bitterly cold but he had felt nothing but ice in his veins and bones since the moment he had been marked, not even in Voldemort's death had he found reprieve. It was here, in the ‘real’ world where he struggled, the expectation of his impending marriage, the business he had been forced to learn inside out overnight, fielding press, it was exhausting.
He blocked out his mother, her head in the grate, yelling at whoever was on the other side, likely the lawyers. Another migraine was throbbing behind his eyes and he wasn’t convinced he could be bothered to continue dealing with this today, not that he had a choice. His mother moved out of the way and one of the suits he recognised as Atticus stepped through. “I can assure you, Mrs. Malfoy, the contract is sound.” His eyes narrowed on it, offering Draco his quill to use instead.
The gold ink hurt his eyes but he signed the blasted contract again anyway. Same result.
Atticus huffed arrogantly. “Well, obviously, if we had been advised of Master Malfoy’s preexisting marriage, we could have dealt with that first.” What?! His mother turned to him with a look of utter betrayal while blood rushed to Draco’s head, making him dizzy. No, there was a mistake, he was not married, had never been married, had never signed another contract or license to wed— “He can not enter into a betrothal contract while he is still married to his first wife. I don’t believe we have her records on file, which is incredibly reckless, if Mr. Malfoy can provide them to us we can expedite a divorce settlement—”
“I’m not married!” He exclaimed, standing suddenly and knocking the inkpot over, ink bled across the surface of the contract that had been deemed so important to him and his family's future, blocking out the black words written underneath. “I’m—”
“I know how to do my job, Mr. Malfoy, incredibly well, hence why you pay me so handsomely. That rejection of your signature is because of an already existing spouse. If you are truly as clueless as you are claiming to be then I suggest you head into the records department at the Ministry to have this straightened out.” The suit drawled while he cleaned his glasses, condescending, as if Draco were an idiot, but he was not married.
He was fucking married.
Except they could not tell him to whom as, “You and your wife failed to provide the necessary documentation after completing the soul-bonding ceremony.”
“WHAT?!” his Mother had screeched beside him like a banshee, steam practically escaping from her ears but the floor beneath him shook, he couldn’t see because the edges of his vision were blurring, forcing darkness in and turning him blind. He couldn’t breathe, no matter how desperately he tried to suck in air. A soul bond. He had unintentionally, unknowingly, bound his soul to another.
He had been cursed not to have a choice in this life, had prayed that in his next he might be born a muggle, or a squib, hell he would even take a gnome, anything that meant no one would expect anything of him, that he would be free to live his own life as he saw fit to do so, to make his own choices and decide his own fate but now that had been stripped from him too.
“Need you to breathe for me, Mr Malfoy—” Someone was telling him in a calm voice as if he hadn’t just changed the course of his very existence forever. The crushing skeletal hand of Tom Marvalo Riddle squeezed around his wrist, hard enough that his bones threatened to snap. Those red eyes peered into his mind, tearing it to shreds and picking apart every weakness he had, torturing his mother for each and every one. The tip of Voldemort’s wand sunk into his flesh, burning the skin around it and infecting his bloodstream with a thin black acid. “Big breath in, slowly, counting to six—we’re going to have to put him under—”
Every nerve and cell in him felt like they were being split in two under the prolonged use of his master's cruciatus curse. It would have been less painful for his skin to be flayed from his body. It was never going to end, he was going to die here on his ballroom floor, the price of having let them get away. He prayed to just forfeit his life, he wasn’t strong enough so he let his mind succumb to the darkness.
A hum of an unsung lullaby beside him roused him from his sleep, Narcissa stood rearranging flowers in a vase with a judgemental dissatisfaction. “You had to be sedated. You had a panic attack.” She explained, clipped in her tone without so much as a glance his way, he didn’t need her to say it. She thought he was weak. He had embarrassed her publicly, in the Ministry of Magic, and not only that, but he had burned any chance of saving this deal with the Greengrass family, and their reputation along with it, to the ground.
“Apologies.” He whispered, his throat ached in the same way it used to after he had screamed through his punishments.
“You need to see a mind healer, Draco. You are married and you need to see a mind healer.” He chanced a look her way, expecting to see disappointment but she looked worried for him. “Also, figure out who the new Lady Malfoy is, and do it fast, we can't have this getting out to the media first and since you're soul-bound… well, there’s no chance of a quick and quiet divorce, whoever she—she?” She paused suddenly, a thought dawning on her. “Is it a woman?”
“Mother—”
“Listen, if not… it’s okay, your father may take a bit to get used to the idea but we can find…. alternative arrangements for an heir—”
“Mother,” Draco warned. “I wouldn’t possibly know who it is. It wasn’t intentional.” He swallowed nervously and sat up, he wasn’t sure how she had managed to get him home into his room, she wasn’t allowed a wand for another three years. “I’m sorry.”
His mother waved her hand dismissively and went back to the task of perfecting the floral arrangement on his bedside table. “What’s done is done.” He knew she was still feeling a concoction of emotions toward the matter but his panic attack must have scared her enough to be wary of setting him off again. “I always wondered about you and Theodore—”
“Merlin and fucking Morgana.” Draco groaned, his hands stroking down his face. “Just because Theo is gay doesn’t mean I am.”
“—You two were rather close as children, I wouldn’t judge you, Draco, if you had…. explored—”
“Mother! I have never gone there with Theo or any other man before. I don’t know who it is, I assure you, you will be the first to know—”
“Second.”
“What?”
“I will be the second to know, I assume that your spouse is also unaware of the current situation. Normally, I wouldn’t understand how that could even possibly be the case but… well… it's been a trying few years, you are all a little preoccupied.” Narcissa brushed her hands down the front of her robes, smoothing out creases that weren’t there. His mother was very clearly uncomfortable with the turn of conversation but he knew she was trying. “You said that you hadn’t… engaged with any wizards, but you did not rule out any witches. I won’t say anything else on the matter because it's more than any mother needs to know about her only child, but if I were you, I would start with that list first. I’ll leave you to get some rest.” Her lips pressed a kiss to his forehead before slipping from his room but he hardly felt it, his heart had stopped in his chest because that list consisted of exactly one witch, one time and it could not be her.
There was no way.
Because if it was… things were about to get very messy, very quickly, he glanced down at the scar he refused to let his mother glamour and sighed. “Bartholomew.” He summoned the one-hundred and eighty-five-year-old house elf appearing at his bedside, his ordinarily stiff demeanour seemed particularly on edge today.
“Master?”
“Where is she?” Draco glowered at the elf.
The elf’s round yellow eyes shifted to look at the flowers, avoiding his gaze. Bartholomew would have known instantly, the second the connection was made, and for years, he had said nothing. “Where is who—”
“Don’t play with me Barth,” Draco snapped, he was truly very fond of the old creature, relic that he was but right now he was trying his patience. “I know you know. Where is the young Mistress of the house.”
Bartholomew grumbled a few minutes before eventually he was forced to answer. “She is at St. Mungo’s, Master Malfoy.”