Hi again! I know I should be working on "Till the Sky Turns Red", but this idea came to me while I was watching Cinderella with my niece today. It actually has nothing to do with Cinderella, but it is a fairy tale. I want honest opinions on this. It's a rough idea, and if anyone has any ideas on how to make it better let me know. It's kinda boring, since I purposefully made it all set up. anyway, enough rambling from me. Please let me know!

Disclaimer: Oh Harry Potter, if I owned you, things would be so different. But I don't! It's all J.K. Rowling's!

Once upon a time in a faraway land…there was a noble family named the Weasleys. They weren’t of great standing in the kingdom, never having very much money to buy their way up the ladder, but were respected for the fact that they had six sons who had all been brought up to live in the court. The Weasleys youngest child, however, was a daughter named Ginny. She is the catalyst that begins our story of love between two people who should never have even met.

Harry Potter was like the seventh son that the Weasley family had never had. His mother had been a great friend of Molly Weasley growing up. Their mothers had been great friends, and they had spent many a summer in each other’s company. When Lily Evans met and married the cook’s servant, James Potter, she was disowned and became nothing more than a servant herself. Molly had just finished giving birth to twins at this time, and she needed a housemaid to help her with her five unruly sons. So, as one last favor to Lily, Molly had hired her and her husband on as servants. Lily became the caretaker of Charlie, Bill, and Percy, so that Molly had time with her sons Fred and George. James became the cook for the Weasleys, seeing as his cooking was his pride and joy.

Then the amazing happened. The twins were nearing their second birthday, when Molly announced that she was pregnant once more. Just five months after her announcement, Lily discovered that she herself was pregnant also. The two families rejoiced and were thrilled at the idea of having children the same age. Molly gave birth to a sixth healthy son, whom Arthur and she named Ronald, and then nearly sixth months after Ron’s birth, Lily delivered a beautiful baby boy. He had soft raven hair, and pale skin that seemed to glow with ethereal beauty, even if he was just a baby. James and Lily were thrilled and delighted to see their son for the first time, and named him Harry James Potter. The young parents quickly began to worship the tiny feet their baby crawled on.

However, just over a year later…disaster struck.

For years that night was spoken of with great confusion. No one was ever sure how the fire started that night, and the only ones who would have known perished.

The fire that started in the kitchen was quickly spreading, and a servant boy from the kitchens rushed to the house, to warn the Weasleys of the impending doom. The Weasleys all successfully evacuated, but when Lily heard that the fire was in the kitchen, she handed Harry to Molly and rushed off, yelling about how she would be right back. James had been in the kitchen that night to make a special dinner for the little family of three and she had to make sure he got out. Molly, who was already loaded down with a one year old and five month old in her arms, screamed after Lily as her own maid took a screaming Ron and Ginny from Molly’s arms. The other boys and Arthur were already out the door, and Charlie ran back in to drag his mother out of the home that would soon be burned to the ground. The kitchen blazed brightly, the colors blending from light yellow beams, to red and orange death. The screams that could be heard would echo in the minds of many from the household for years to come.

Everyone that had been trapped in the house at the time of the fire perished that awful night. Molly and Arthur were forced to build a new house, and only succeeded in doing so with the help of the Zabini family, who became their benefactors. They agreed to be the benefactors to the Weasleys on one condition: in return for the Zabini’s helping the Weasleys rebuild their home, they must offer up their only daughter, five month old Ginerva Weasley, to be married to their own one year old son Blaise, when she reached sixteen. The Weasleys readily accepted. The Zabini’s were a high class family, their son and his twin sister, Hermione, already close friends with the reigning king’s only son. A union between Ginny and their son would be a perfect way for them to try and gain some of their honor back.

Even after the Zabini’s help, the Weasleys could no longer afford as much any more, and were forced to let many of their servants go. However, Molly took Harry in. She refused to make him her own son, saying that had Lily and James meant for him to no longer be theirs, Lily wouldn’t have said to hold him until she and James returned. Still, Molly raised Harry along with her sons, and Ron and Harry soon grew to be best friends. Years passed, and then suddenly, May 3, Ginny Weasley’s sixteenth birthday, was upon them.

BIRTHDAYTIME

Harry wouldn’t have told you his life was perfect. However, he was never one to lie and tell you that everything was great for him. However, he was happy for the family he had, and he was especially proud of Ginny today. Every one was extremely nervous though. Every five years since the agreement had been made between the Zabini’s and Weasleys the two families had met in the town square and spent the day together. None of the families other children ever met and this was done to help the two get to know each other without others influencing them. It had been a year since their last meeting. Today was the day that the letter would come from the Zabinis informing them if Ginny should bother coming to finalize the wedding plans. Everyone sat in nervous anticipation, while still trying to make it seem like any other birthday celebration.

This went double for Ginny, who was cooped up in her room with Harry and Ron. She was so nervous that she kept flitting from place to place within the room. Harry was watching her from the bed, quietly laughing at how nervous about a man she claimed to “not care two wits for”, while Ron pretended to be sleeping while they all waited for the letter to come. The festivities wouldn’t begin until the letter had arrived, and it wasn’t due till at the earliest, one o’clock. It was twelve-thirty now. Molly had been the most confident that the letter would still come. Even if Ginny and Blaise weren’t in love with each other at this point, they seemed like each other well enough, and were good enough friends. Besides, it wasn’t as if they didn’t know what they were expected to do once Ginny was brought to live at the Zabini estate.

Then finally it came. The missive from Lord Zabini arrived, and in it, Lord and Lady Zabini told Arthur and Molly that their son would be delighted to have Ginny come stay with them, before a marriage, which would take place on the first day of the new year. She was to bring one lady-in-waiting and was requested to bring two escorts. Normally it was only one, but since Harry and Ron were the same age, and the custom was for the lady’s older brother to escort her, it would be the two of them. Celebrations lasted long into the night, in the excitement for the upcoming nuptials.

Harry and Ron were up late that night in preparation for their three day journey that would begin at dawn tomorrow. They were to take one of the only good carriages the Weasleys owned, and leave to go live with the Zabini family. Harry and Ron were both extremely nervous. Neither of them had ever met Blaise, and didn’t know if they would be able to handle eight months living in the same home as him and his sister, if it turned out that they didn’t get along. Harry kept in mind though that it was all for Ginny. It wouldn’t matter if they didn’t like Blaise, it mattered whether or not Ginny liked Blaise. Besides, now he was certainly going to be a part of the family. They would have to learn to like him and his sister, or else distance themselves from the entire clan.

Harry himself didn’t know how he would be accepted by the Zabini family. Ron would be able to gather respect simply from the fact that his sister was the fiancée of their son, but Harry was just a nobody. Yes, his mother had been a noblewoman before she married his father, but after that, she had become a servant. The Potter name meant absolutely nothing to nobility. Harry was certain to be looked down on just for the fact that he should have been just a servant’s son, not considered son to a noble family. If his parents had not died, he would have just watched Ron and Ginny leave tomorrow, waving goodbye from his quarters in the kitchen, and profess how much he would miss them. He wasn’t meant to be considered a brother to someone’s intended bride.

Then there was the case of the prince. This didn’t seem to bother Ron, but it sent chills up Harry’s spine. Not that he was frightened, just….absolutely terrified of him. The king and queen had only ever been able to have two children during their lifetime. They had their son, crown prince Draco who would be seventeen next month, and then, after ten more years of trying, they had managed to have another daughter, whom they named Persephone. The royal family was not something to be laughed at.

For many years, the kingdom had been ruled by a ruthless dictator by the name of Thomas Riddle. He had been an evil, disgusting killer. Everything seemed perfect for him, as long as the people lived in fear of him, until he was over thrown by his advisor, Lucius Malfoy. Everyone had lived in fear for at least five years after Malfoy killed Riddle, waiting for his own reign of terror to begin. It never did. Instead, Lucius worked to bring the land back to its former greatness, and ruled the kingdom with a kind, yet iron fist. His word was law; there was no way to escape it.

Still, this was only one reason why the idea of the crown prince terrified Harry. He had also heard rumors of the princes own ruthlessness. He never gave second chances to anyone who displeased him, and tended to judge your character by the type of first impression you made. In Harry’s eyes, how could he, ‘just a servant boy’ ever manage to make a good impression on the prince? Yet, there would be no escape from it. After all, the prince was best friends with Blaise and Hermione, so he was bound to show up at some time during the next eight months.

Still there was nothing Harry could do; no way he could know if he’d be happy in the situation he was about to enter, until three days from now, when they reached the city where the highest nobility lived.

Meanwhile, in the capital city…

Blaise was nervous. There was no easy way to describe the feeling in his chest. It wasn’t like he’d never seen Ginny before, or that he had any reason to be nervous about someone he’d been friendly with for years. It was just the fact that she was coming to become his official fiancée. There’d be no more acting as if he was unattached anymore. Not that he truly minded. Ginny was fun to be around, and when he’d last seen her, she’d seemed like she was growing up to be very pretty. He just didn’t know if he was ready to be thinking about marriage to anyone.

Hermione sure seemed excited. She had never been able to meet the girl Blaise went off to meet every five years, and was thrilled to finally be meeting her soon-to-be sister-in-law. She also wasn’t too upset about the two brothers coming with Ginny. She always was up to meet new people, and two seventeen year old boys who were going to have nothing to do for the next eight months may be fun to hang around. They were bound to get into lots of trouble, as far as she was concerned. Plus it would give her a chance to escape her parents constant nagging to find a husband.

But the two “escorts” were one of the things that really made Blaise nervous. It was one thing to know that Ginny had six older brothers, plus the boy who might as well have been her seventh brother. It was quite another to be meeting the two that were the closest to her. They were bound to be the most protective of her. He didn’t know what he could do to make them respect him. From what he’d heard from the few conversations Ginny and he had had about “Harry” and “Ron”, they were as thick as thieves, and then there were their temperaments. From what Ginny said, Ron had a temper that was quick to flare, and was always on edge around new people, just waiting for them to insult him. Harry on the other hand, was very nice to everyone, but according to her, he was someone that it took a long time to impress. To hear it from Ginny, you had to be more than a superficial noble to actually be considered worth Harry’s time. Which was funny when you considered she was talking about a boy she said didn’t judge anyone.

Blaise was completely baffled on what to do. Draco would be coming to see him and Hermione on the day of their arrival. Draco tended to put on his “holier than thou” visage when around people he didn’t know. From what Blaise had gathered, this wouldn’t go over well, when all of them needed to strive to get into these particular guests good graces. He would need to talk to Draco about just keeping his mouth shut, unless he chose to address them kindly. Not many could have gotten away with saying that to the crown prince and live to tell the tale. However, Blaise was not everyone. He was Draco’s best friend, and Draco tended to ignore him most of the time anyway.

Blaise didn’t know how long his poor heart would be able to hold out. This day had always seemed so far away whenever he’d seen Ginny, and even when his parents had spoken of whether or not to give the go ahead to begin wedding arrangements. Even when Blaise had known at the last visit that there was only a year left until Ginny’s sixteenth birthday, he had still kept thinking that he had months to worry about everything that could (and probably would) go wrong. The largest problem arose between Draco and Ginny’s adopted brother. Draco was quick to put on airs and judge people, and Harry was slow to impress, and quick to lose his respect for someone. If either one did something wrong, then everything could be ruined. Draco, as crown prince, could choose not to support the union. Harry, as Ginny’s brother, could decide not to give the marriage his blessing. Blaise knew most of this was silly to worry about, but he couldn’t help it.

The only thing that Blaise could keep telling himself was that nothing was set in stone yet. There were still three days until the Weasley carriage showed itself at the gates of Zabini manor. Three days where Blaise could go out and buy thoughtful, lavish gifts for his guests. Three days for Blaise to talk to his parents about his worries and to get Draco to basically try not to be…well…himself. Three days, until his life would change forever, for better or for worse.

I really want to know if you think this is worth continuing. Review please!