the malfoy boy

INTRO

In 1917, the British Ministry of Magic helped develop and pass a "Pure-blood Propagation Program" in which pure-blooded families could sign up their children to receive an arranged marriage with other pure-bloods who signed up for the program.

For each child a family signed up for the act, they would receive a series of payments: A decent amount of 5,000 Galleons when they signed up, a small handful to pay for the actual wedding itself (of around 500 Galleons), and a small fortune for each child produced from the coupling (of 10,000 Galleons for the first, 8,000 for the second, and 5,000 for each child thereafter). The couple themselves received: 1,000 Galleons at the assignment; a stipend of 50 Galleons a month for each month they remained engaged or wed while in the trial period, with a maximum of 26 months (as each couple received their assignment in June of their 5th year and were to be wed by end of August after they graduated their 7th year); a wedding present of another 1,000 Galleons, and then 15,000 Galleons for the first child, 12,000 for the second, and 10,000 for each child thereafter.

The Program was partially funded by the government to promote the expansion of the dwindling blood-purity (they took the stance of promoting more options for different pure-blood mixes and also putting out more children to allow these families to be okay with one or two half-blood branches, though everyone knew it was because the Minister at the time was a blood-supremacist), but it was mostly funded by pure-bloods who donated to the program. They were the pure-bloods who either wanted a leg up in the world by potentially being tied to a more illustrious pure-blood family or pure-bloods who believed in blood-purity. Whatever the reason, the program had plenty of money to fund the endeavour, and it ran smoothly for a while.

The families who signed up children, usually one or two at least, were at a silent agreement that a penalty would occur if one of the coupling decided to leave before an heir was produced. The penalty was usually money, money that the family would be missing out on if the couple had at least one child, but sometimes it was more serious: they would have to give up another child to the coupling or they would enter a very not-so-legal servicing. Sometimes, these families got around that penalty by offering up a House Elf or two, but other times... well, then they would be indentured servants until they had a child who could be coupled.

So far, there were around 70 families who had signed up for the program. At the end of the students' 5th year, they would find out their coupling. It was a random shuffle among the names. They were told after their OWL exams, so they could plan their NEWTs classes with their partner, to shape their futures and their careers. For instance, a partnership was less likely to work if one partner wanted to be an auror and the other a free-lance curse-breaker. There needed to be some overlap, and that was for them to figure out when they picked their classes for 6th and 7th years.

~ * ~

In 1943, Joelle Riverwood was waiting anxiously for her assigned partner. Her family had been notorious for branching out, finding "non-pure" lovers, and growing families that branched into massive and strong half-blood trees. But through some fate, her father was a pure-blood named Gerald Riverwood, who had fallen in love with a pure-blood witch from America, named Rachelle Zhao. After generations of most of the Riverwoods "cross-breeding" with non-pure-bloods--as it was called by some of the more rude pure-bloods--by some stroke of wild luck, Joelle Riverwood was born to the only pure-blood family that carried the name.