Disclaimer: World of Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling. Story's title is part of a lyric to the song "Almost Lover" by A Fine Frenzy.

A/n: Part of "The Ten, Twenty, Thirty Chapter Challenge" by aimz666. I picked the pairings, aimz666 picked the amount of chapters and their titles. Challenge is combined with the "Almost like a novel- multi-chapter-story-challenge" by Alarice Tey. Story set during HBP, or at least starts there and is a bit AU.

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My Luckless Romance

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Prologue: Non Refundable

Tracey sat in an empty compartment next to the window, already decked out in her school robes with a thoughtful expression on her small, pale, pretty face. For once, her long hair was not pulled up in a high, completely casual and plain ponytail. Long silken strands of straight, wine-red hair fell into her face, obscuring it partially from sight.

However, her greyish-green gaze was not studying the yet crowded platform, nor the steps that often passed by her compartment door. Instead, they were fixed dead ahead of her, staring blankly, all the while she twisted a plain, platinum band around a long, dexterous finger.

Somehow, her mind couldn't quite wrap around the events of the last several weeks, which had altered her life so completely.

My mother is dead.

Somehow, she still couldn't quite believe that. Tears emerged in her eyes, which she was quick to wipe away.

She'd never had much of a relationship with her mother. In fact, she was pretty sure what they had was hardly considered a relationship at all unless one counted the time her mother spent training her in self-defense. Apart from that her mother fed her, clothed her, and put a roof over her head, and as far as her mother was concerned, that was as far as her obligations with Tracey went.

Tracey had never known love from her mother. Had never received comfort or affection from the woman. While she had never been abused in any way, she was quite sure her mother hated her. Sometimes she would just look at Tracey... with so much abhorrence, that Tracey was left reeling.

And now, her mother was gone; the only parent Tracey had ever known, had been murdered and Tracey wasn't sure what she was supposed to feel. However, for some reason the loss had still hurt, even if her mother had been anything but model parent.

"Oh, you're alive. And here I thought you'd dropped dead," Tracey slowly turned her attention to the compartment door from which the haughty, cold voice laced with sarcasm had issued. Tracey knew who it would be, before her mind had caught up. She wasn't particularly surprised when she found herself staring at a considerably peeved Daphne Greengrass, Slytherin House's resident Ice Queen.

Daphne Greengrass was by far one of the most attractive girls in all the school. Her features were perfect; her skin pale, and blemish free, it looked like porcelain; she had pale, blue eyes which looked like chips of ice on a clear day; her dirty-blonde hair fell to her hips just like Tracey's but instead fell in loose, neat curls. While her frame was for the most part slender, she had shapely legs and a large bust when compared to other sixth year girls.

Tracey didn't say anything in response to Daphne. She knew what Daphne was angry about. She and Daphne had been best friends since first year and while most people only knew the blonde as the Ice Queen, Tracey knew Daphne, the girl beneath the layer of ice. The girl who hated the stupid pure-blood propaganda, and loathed the thought that Slytherin had become the home of the bullies and future Death Eaters.

Tracey in particular took offense to the latter. Nothing could make her angrier, than being assumed to be a future Death Eater. Especially when she was a half-blood and looked down on by most of her House-mates and especially as her mother was an Auror.

Most summer's, she and Daphne wrote to each other non-stop and Tracey usually spent the month of August with the Greengrasses. This year, Tracey had been unable to make it. She was sure that Daphne must have written her a million times, and having not received a response, was deeply offended and hurt.

However, how did she go about explaining to her friend, that one day her mother had not come home from work and Tracey had woken up in a dark, cold, cell? How did you tell someone, even if they were your best friend, that you had been a prisoner for nearly a month before suddenly being forced to marry against your will, a man old enough to be your father, because some nut had decreed it?

Daphne closed the compartment door and stepped in fully, her features twisting from cold anger, to concern.

"Tracey?" Daphne questioned, her tone softening as she noted how pale and thin her friend looked. Though Tracey's expression was blank, there was something in her eyes that unsettled Daphne. She simply looked lost and broken. The girl Daphne had always known as silently defiant, sassy in the face of disdain... simply seemed gone.

"My..." Tracey felt her throat constrict and she turned away from Daphne who had suddenly taken the seat next to her. She felt warm, soft hands taking her own cold one's in their grasp. She could feel the tears build in her eyes, but forced them away as she cleared her throat. "Faeleen's' dead," Tracey said in deadpan.

Daphne's eyes widened at this as she stared at her friend in horror. Tracey's eyes were trained almost unseeingly on her lap. "Oh Merlin, Trace, I'm so sorry. I know you and your mum... but that's just awful," Daphne stated, at a loss to what she was supposed to say and losing her composure for once. She'd never lost anyone, and wasn't sure what she was supposed to say, especially when knowing that Tracey and her mother had never exactly got on splendidly.

Daphne felt suddenly so inadequate, a feeling she had never really felt before. She found herself almost wishing that Theodore Nott was there with them, but pushed the sentiment aside.

"That's not all," Tracey said, blinking slowly and turning her attention to her hands, where they were still clasped in Daphne's own. For a moment, Tracey paused, wondering if she should say anything. However, she hadn't exactly been forbidden from sharing the information and Draco was well aware of the situation having been a witness. Tracey didn't think it was far-fetched to assume that Goyle and Crabbe knew too, either by Draco or their father's. Surely, it wouldn't be long before the majority of Slytherin was aware of what happened, so what was the harm if she told Daphne now?

"What is it?" Daphne asked, dreading what she was about to hear. She couldn't imagine anything worse, but she knew something else was troubling her friend and it made Daphne ache. Tracey was like her own sister, and Daphne couldn't really abide the thought that she couldn't help her friend.

Tracey slowly looked up into Daphne's blue eyes, seeing them shining at her with sadness, though Daphne put on a brave face. Tracey couldn't help the corner of her lip lifting slightly, knowing for certain that she needed to tell Daphne. Though there was nothing her friend could do about the situation, just the thought of someone knowing about it and sympathizing with her, or having someone to talk to about it with, made her feel slightly better.

However, Tracey wasn't sure how to tell her without having to explain the entire situation. And somehow, she wasn't ready to really even think of all that.

Tracey sat, frozen on a cushioned, expensive, antique bench before an equally antique, ornate, vanity. Her mind still could not quite comprehend what was happening. In the mirror's reflection, she could see her hair pulled out of her face, the strands that ran alongside her face twisted and connected in fancy braid behind her head. The rest of her hair was loose and falling in a sheet of very dark red all the way down to her hips.

She was wearing expensive, off the shoulder, white dress robes. A silk sash of silver was tied around her waist. The sweet heart collar of the robes, had an intricate design weaved in silver thread.

"You look very beautiful," Tracey looked up, where Narcissa Malfoy stood over her shoulder and was smiling at her tensely in the mirror. Though Tracey had only seen Narcissa a handful of times and did not know the woman well, she could see the sadness in her pale blue eyes. Eyes that almost reminded her of Daphne's.

"Why is this happening to me?" Tracey asked, unable to keep herself from asking. She didn't understand anything. While she could understand why Death Eaters would want her mother dead, as she was an Auror, Tracey didn't understand why they had gone to all the trouble of kidnapping her. Why not just kill her? Why locker her up for weeks? Why force her to marry anyone? "I'm nobody, I'm not even a pure-blood."

Mrs. Malfoy shook her head sadly, running delicate fingers through Tracey's hair. "You don't know anything, do you?" Mrs. Malfoy stated, not unkindly.

At this, Tracey would have normally felt her hackles rise. But she didn't have the energy as she turned where she sat as best she could in the robes she wore and looked up in Draco's mother's general direction. "I... I've never... even had a boyfriend."

"Sweet Salazar." Suddenly Mrs. Malfoy was kneeling before her and taking her limp hands into her own and looking up into her eyes with a somewhat fierce expression. "I know right now this appears to be the end of the world to you, but it isn't," Mrs. Malfoy whispered in a rush. "You've been very fortunate. Severus is a good man, he won't... let you come to harm."

"Tracey."

Tracey snapped out of the memory and looked at a visibly concerned Daphne. Not knowing how exactly to say it, she pulled her left hand from Daphne's hold and raised it to eye level with her friend.

Daphne stared perplexed at the back of Tracey's hand. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to be focusing on when her eyes narrowed on the ring on Tracey's hand. Knowing her friend had never been one for jewelery, it was a bit strange, not withstanding the fact that the plain band was affixed to her friend's ring-finger. "Tracey... is that what I think it is supposed to be?"

"If you're thinking a wedding-band, then yes," Tracey replied, her voice dry and ironic, almost reminiscent of the Tracey she knew so well.

Daphne put one of her own hands over her mouth, to cover the fact that it had fallen open. However, the gasp was easily discernible as she stared wide-eyed at her dark-haired friend. "You're married?" Daphne hissed in shock.

"It was... arranged," Tracey replied darkly.

"What? Why? By who? To who?"

Tracey didn't know the answer to the why. Frankly she was in the dark and didn't understand. However, she could answer her friends last question. "Snape. And yes, I do mean, Professor Snape."

Tracey turned away and placed her now free hands in her lap once more while Daphne struggled to find an appropriate reaction to such news. Bizarrely, Tracey found herself thinking that this was what people who won the lottery must feel, the sort of lottery that is that no one wanted to win and it was non refundable.

Because who else in the bloody whole world, could this have happened to? Who else would have the misfortune to be kidnapped, orphaned and married to their professor and Head of House, all in one summer before they even finished school?

TBC...

A/n: Please review. Reviews help fuel the muse. Besides that, let me know if people are reading and enjoying the story, since I've got several other stories in the works, reviews help me know which one's are being actively read and therefore are more desirous of my time.