Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters portrayed in this little production of my evil little mind. The plot is mine, however, and I’d be grateful if this story remained an only child. (Meaning: no plagiarizing)

Note: This story was written in response to the “Out Of Your Realm” Challenge, issued by the awesome timeturner. A big ‘thank you’ goes to my friend Martina, who is an excellent musician and made me love classical music and all the strange biographic facts about composers. Chapter titles are taken from Beethoven’s “Symphony n.5.” Applause to his genius.

OUVERTURE.

MOVEMENT ONE.

ALLEGRO CON BRIO.

You are a pureblood: you have the perfect family, the perfect social background, the perfect pedigree. You know the right people, the right way to hold a fork, the right way to carry yourself around with an impalpable grace that expires superiority from your every pore. You are a pureblood: you are better than them and you know it as much as the all do. You incline your plate in the way you’ve been taught, you leave your napkin on your chair, not on the table, like all plebeians do. When you want to stand up, there is always someone who is just waiting to move your chair and lend you a helping hand. You don’t have to work hard, you have people doing things for you: you have money enough to pay them for doing so. You won’t ever need to find a job, you have heritance; you just have to find yourself the perfect husband, bore him the perfect heir and then you will be free to do whatever you want to.

And then they say you will be free.

You are a pureblood: you have perfect manicured nails, shoes perfect for every occasion, you have jewels worth more than some plebeian’s house. You have the perfect skin, smooth like silk, white as milk; you go outside as little as you can: you hate the way the wind blows and makes your cheeks and your nose a little red. You hate having ruffled hair – it sounds so common. You hate dirtying your hundred-galleons-worth shoes with the ground everyone walks onto. You are used to walking on fine elf-made carpets, on expensive marble floors where you can hear the loud tip-tap of your heels announcing your arrival. You never enter a room, you are introduced; you have never opened a door by yourself in your entire life: there are servants for that.

You are rich, you are superior: your family is better than anyone else’s; you have power, you have influence, you have beauty. You have been taught about posture, about manners. They taught you the way to converse in polite society, vague, offering smiles every now and then: no one expects you to have a smart comeback, you are only a woman, after all. You just have to find yourself the perfect husband, bore him the perfect heir and then you will be free to do whatever you wish to do. Have tea with your other pureblood friends, shop for expensive clothes and show pretty at Ministry’s soirée and events.

You are a pureblood: no one expects to see a glimpse of feeling under your ice-cold face. Your eyes do not have to glitter in joy, happiness, cheerfulness, enjoinment, excitement, vivacity – only naive people show their true emotions. You eyes do not cry out of happiness, pain or sadness – a pureblood is never weak. Your knees do not tremble, your heart does not leap, your steps do not falter, you do not make mistakes while talking. Your words do not slip, your actions are always programmed, controlled, calm and collected. You do not act rash, you do not commit mistakes, your smile never falters, it never touches your eyes.

You are nice to people worth be nice to: you make the right friends but never confide in them. You are never weak, you keep your secrets tightly shut in your heart and your mind and never tell them: you are perfect, you are not supposed to have secrets. And your friends are perfect too, they do not have any secrets either; they do not keep skeletons hidden in their closets; they do not ever think they are anything else than perfect; they never do anything out of line, out of what they are expected to do. Their families taught them so, your family taught you so: you keep up the attitude, because you believe in respecting tradition. You are al purebloods: if you started to break traditions, where would the magical world go? You cannot ever leave it in the hands of Half-Bloods and Muggleborns with their deviated conceptions about magic and their diluted, dirty blood. You are purebloods: you are superior, you are much better than them. The magic that flows in your veins is much more ancient, much more powerful, much more attention-worth than theirs.

You are a pureblood: you do not want them to step in your way, steal the things that should belong to you: the glory, the admiral, the respect, the wealthy husbands. There are things that are rightfully yours, which were yours since before you were born, and you are not going to let them take those away from you. You are going to fight, in a superior, perfectly-mannered, subtle, cruel way.

You glance at them with disdain and offer them an occasional smirk in the hallways of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – they do not belong in your world. You stare at them at every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day of the week, and you wonder why they are being given the same food as you. Are they worth the same feeding? Shouldn’t servants have their meals in the kitchen, before or after their master, in silence and oblivion?

Thank Salazar at least you do not have to seat with them; you are a Slytherin, and all Slytherins are pure and hate that scum as much as you do. You watch them, cheering happily, shoving the food in their hungry mouths like if they were vulgar pigs. The fact that the Headmaster of the scholastic institution you have been introduced into absolutely loves them makes you want to be sick. All the smiles, the approving glances, the “ten points to Gryffindor” feel like you are being stabbed in the middle of your chest; is the world turning upside down? These Mudbloods are becoming too bold for their own good; they need to be stopped, and your friends all agree with you. They sit beside you, the look on their face as incomprehensible as ever, but for once you know exactly what they want to do: hex them off, ban the to some solitary place of the world and then look at them die of starvation and without the benefit of their magic, YOUR magic.

You keep staring at them, you are seventeen, you are a Slytherin and you are a woman. You keep staring at them, and suddenly you see them taking possession of the world you are born into, the world that belongs to you. You see them with your inward eye stealing away all the things you were destined for since before you were born, since before they were born. You see them and then you get angry inside; your face does not change, not anyone of the people near you are able to spot any trace of change on your features, but you know that from this moment on things are different.

You are a pureblood, you are a woman, you have been taught that the main purpose of your life is to marry a pureblood man and produce the perfect pureblood heir and then they say you will be free. You are seventeen and your seventh year in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is almost over: you decide it is time to find the perfect future of your perfect life. You do as your mother told you to: you look at them, all your fellow housemates, and you make a mental list of them. You have been taught how to act rational, and you always do what you have been taught.

You pass them fast in review one by one; you count them on the point of your fingers: five suitable, another four are not totally inopportune, but you prefer having the best, since you are the best on the market. Two of them look positively ugly and you want someone to be proud of; someone you can show off with your acquaintances. You do not want to be labelled as ‘the one who never brings her husband out on social events because he is to inappropriate-looking to be seen with.’

Hudibras Mulciber is the first you notice: he is tall, handsome with his long black hair tied with an emerald ribbon at the base of his neck; as far as you know, he is not promised to anyone yet, nor has he shown any interest in the girls his age. His family is fairly rich, but tends to have frequent troubles with the Ministry authority due to some questionable trading with Bulgaria. His father has been sent on a brief sentence to Azkaban once. You do not want to be associated with anything plebeian like prison: you are pure, you are perfect and the ancient House of Black, which you belong into, has never tolerated any involvement with dirty things like crimes. You are la crème de la crème of society, not some vulgar smuggler.

Your eyes then fall on Edmund MacNair: he is Scottish and his family is one of the last wizarding clans left. He lives in a castle in some unplottable area of the Hebrides, far north, where the weather is never warm and you can see icebergs floating on the cold ocean. But your mother told you that his family wealth is getting less and less with every year, their house is coming down into ruins and they saw his mother wearing the same crimson robes at two Ministry receptions. You won’t associate with poors, your life style is not made for poverty; you have higher standards. You resolutely proceed to the next one.

Orion Black. You do not want to think he is your only hope; you value him like if he were the best choice possible, because he is. He is handsome, you quite appreciate the charm his eyes hold: he comes from a perfectly-pedigreed, wealthy, influent, powerful family like yours. In the past he has been associated with some of the most beautiful witches in Hogwarts and he knows exactly how to interact and make friends easily in the highest circles. He is quite brilliant, too: prefect and Quidditch Captain. Ambitious, unprincipled enough to survive and win in Slytherin House, respected, feared and admired from a combination of his fellow Housemates and other students. He is known for being quite reckless in scheming and plotting against Mudbloods, but you heard he has never been caught doing anything, his reputation remaining academically candid.

You observe him further: he is perfectly mannered, aristocratically sitting on the bench a few seats from you. He is slowly, in small bites and pleasantly converse with Rookwood about Quidditch tactics. Although going through a specimen of interrogatory, he does not give anything away: his answers are polite, vague, but firm and not questionable. All of a sudden, he turns his head towards you and acknowledge your presence with an elegant nod: he knew he was being watched closely. You respond with a smile and hold on to his gaze for two seconds more than necessary. Then you stand up and, after a curt good-bye to your friends, you leave the Great Hall, not looking back once.

A few hours later he takes a chair at the table you are sitting alone at in the library. You lift your glance once from your book to acknowledge his presence and then you resume your past occupation, scribbling neat notes every now and then on your parchment. You know he is watching you with his grey ice-cold eyes, but never flinch; you want to win this little game of wills you initiated. You keep working silently at your Transfiguration essay while feeling his gaze trying to decipher the riddle of your intentions. Finally, he gives in. You win.

“What do you want, Walburga?” He does not use metaphors, euphemisms or any rhetorical device you are sure he has been taught, because you have too. You are in polite society now: you are two Slytherins who need to speak clearly, both knowing fully well the power of words. You know it is not the time for mediation: you are a woman that wants something and is fully aware of what it is.

“Marriage,” is your answer. He does not flinch, not for a fraction of an instant: he is a real pureblood. in this moment, you know you have chosen wisely.

“It is negotiable. How much money?”

“All you have. How many heirs?”

“Two.”

“Fine with me. When?”

“December. Mistresses I can have?”

“None. I am no fool.”

You hold onto each other’s gaze, not wanting to be the first to admit surrender. The conversation is over, but the war of wills is still raging strong. You know exactly what to do: your mother taught you. You are the first to lower your eyes, you are not some stubborn Gryffindor, but a well-educated high-class witch, and then you grace him with a small smile of triumph. You two have reached an agreement. He seems satisfied as much as you are, because he stands up from his chair and captures your lips in a kiss. He is not tender, you did not expect him to. There is no love between you two, just as it should be, you have been taught so.

The contract has been signed and sealed now.

You end the afternoon in the Slytherin common room, playing at the piano your father made install. You always play the same piece over and over again. You remember someone saying that it symbolized destiny knocking at your door, and you deemed it as appropriate for the moment. After all, this afternoon, your destiny has knocked to your door: you had called it yourself and it obeyed, as it should be.

You are a pureblood: you are pretty sure the world spins around you.