bloodline ▸ draco malfoy

one.

Anastasia Blanc was a princess... of sorts.

She'd been raised in a tainted household, with blood on her hands and her name the moment she took her first weeping breath.

Still, she was always held to an unmatchable standard of prim and proper. It was beaten into her for the last 16 years and she often wondered what she did so wrong in her past lives to have ended up with this soul-crushing karmic fate.

That stood for a while because, well, there's only so much you can do as the daughter of two former Death Eaters who'd committed some pretty heinous crimes. Young love can make you do crazy things, like even murdering another witch or wizard, she'd always joked.

One, she could dare to defy the plot of the whole narrative and face the wrath of a father who wanted an heir and an emotionally unavailable mother who was too afraid to stand up to him.

Or, two, she could follow along. Play their game. Do exactly as they did and make them proud, no matter how much it burned coming back up.

With each birthday, she was starting to believe it was the latter. She'd begun to think her parents had planned her destiny the moment she began to crawl.

And things only continued to escalate when the Dark Lord returned at the end of her fourth year at Hogwarts.

Anastasia was one of the only ones to believe that bloody Potter kid's story at the time. But only because she had seen it first hand in her own home – her parents' behavior had slowly started to return to its cold, shadowed and psychopathic state. They were rarely around anymore, on "long business trips" for things they couldn't speak of.

People she had never seen before had also started spending awful amounts of time in her family mansion. There was one guest that particularly stood out, the only one that knew her name. It was a woman with such a strong thirst for blood that it made Anastasia's throat close up and her toes curl in her shoes. She was often accompanied by two very familiar looking blondes who quite rarely ever spoke a word — they just looked at Anastasia, one with his beading eyes and the other with her sorrow-filled frown.

She didn't let it bother her too long because, whoever they were, they stopped showing up after the third or fourth round.

She thought about all of this, replaying it against the backs of her eyelids as she sank lower in the warm water of the lavish bathtub that took up a majority of the Prefect bathroom. There was a cigarette in her left hand, smoking lazy circles into the air. This was a muggle contraption she'd seen her mother turn to after a long night of arguing with her father.

The room was silent, almost peaceful, nothing but her breath and the running water from the tap surrounding her like a cushion. It was a Sunday night in early October, so there wasn't too much happening that she needed to be around for. She had stepped down from head girl after her fifth year, giving the badge to Pansy Parkinson instead. Her bun bobbed on the top of her head as she looked up at the mural of what the muggles would call "Heaven" that covered the ceiling.

A loud, high-pitched creak made her ears twist, alerting her that the bathroom door had been opened and her serenity was ruined. She sat up quickly, looking over her right shoulder with dead eyes, not even the slightest bit worried that she was sat there fully naked and only covered by a pile of rapidly thinning bubbles. Her hand flew up to the gold chains that rested on her collarbones and she fiddled with them, trying to train her vision to settle on the intruding figure. She swore at herself, sliding her hand around the tile to find her glasses. When the person didn't move, she relaxed, slouching back down.

"What do we have here?" She said, sounding bored as she sucked a small puff from the cigarette into her lungs.

An unfamiliar voice stung her ears.

"Didn't mean to interrupt whatever... this... is." The intruding figure was a man. "I'm looking for someone for my friend, Theodore Nott. He said they'd probably be up here, but since he doesn't know the password, he sent me. You haven't happened to see them, have you?" He was stiff as a stone, holding an irritated look that would make a flower shrivel inward on itself.

She smiled at the mention of Theo, puffing again. "Ohhh," she purred. "Why don't you tell Theodore to go and fuck himself, alright?"

The man snorted in amusement. "Already did, several times today actually."

That was it, for a brief moment. Silence settled around them uncomfortably. She felt him eyeing her, but chose to not gauge his interest. Her lips curled around the cigarette again, before her fingers found themselves snuffing the tail end of it on a small golden dish she'd conjured at the edge of the tub.

"You're out of luck," she deadpanned. "No one's been up here but me." He was still standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets in stiff awkwardness. The bath water was getting cold, so she cast a heating charm before sliding her glasses onto her nose and turning to look at him. Her baby hairs were stuck to her temples with sweat and her body felt hazy.

She knew who he was. He knew who she was. But, without another word, he turned on his heel and exited.

She sighed a breath she didn't realize she was holding, shaking her head in pure, childlike amusement. She knew Theo was looking for her, he always was. She merely enjoyed the chase.

It was the same every time: He would send his friends nonchalantly, as if he couldn't bother with her presence himself, and they would pretend not to know her, partaking in the brutal game of cat and mouse. She would never associate with their clique in broad daylight. She tried to remain innocent in the eyes of the castle, so that nothing would be suspected when hell eventually, and finally, broke loose. Though, sometimes, Theo would "accidentally" send random Slytherin students, as he knew it would boil her blood, only causing him more pleasure.

"Theodore, darling, how fucking dare you defy my rules!"

He would use it as ammunition for when they met up after hours, when the hustle and bustle of students had paused for a short period of time. He would lock the door, cast a silencing charm and all but melt into her hands, crying out in hushed whispers as he allowed her words to slither around him like vices.

She had him tied around her finger, bow and all, and he didn't mind it one bit. That made her heart beat harder against her chest as she dried herself off with a towel and slipped on her favorite robe. A hungry giggle slipped between her teeth and down to the dungeons she went.

"Oh, Theodore!"