A/N: My sincere apologies for the formatting trouble that made it neccessary for me to take this story down after I'd posted the first 13 chapters. I hope this time it's here to stay. Thanks to all of you who left reviews the first time around; unfortunately, your reviews are gone for good, but I hope you'll take the time to review it again this time! This story wouldn't be here at all, if not for Gabriele, who did the formatting for me, and to whom I'm truly grateful. Thanks also to Lina, my beta-reader over at Checkmated, who is helping make this story better in every way.

Prologue

The Druid stepped into the middle of the sacred circle. Guarded by the standing stones, intersected by ley lines from a hundred lands, it marked the very soul of the earth, and the air within it shimmered and pulsed with magic older than the most ancient memory of the most ancient man. Before him stood the man and his bride. Edward Wheezley took Camille Malfoy's hand in his, and gazed into her gray eyes; bright eyes, so full of life and promise. He marveled at the generosity of a fate that decreed she should love him: That she should belong to him. Slowly, deliberately, he placed the ring over the tip of her fourth finger.

"You are Earth," he began in his deep, slow voice. He moved the ring over the tip of her middle finger. "Wind." Her first finger: "Water."

He never got the chance to finish.

"Reducto!" "Impedimenta!" "Stupefy!" Around them, the darkness of the night exploded into streaks of red light, and the air was thick with shouted curses. With bodiless voices. With an enemy they could not see. The candles blew over and extinguished; spells flew through the air, sparking and ricocheting off each other. Lights crisscrossed in the middle of the circle, blue and red and white.

"Get down!" Edward shouted. "Run!"

They ran, fumbling for each other's hands, trying to keep low, to get away from the madness erupting around them. There was a burst of red flame and a sudden explosion and then, only darkness and silence. For a moment, there was nothing else. Then someone muttered "Lumos" and a single wand lit up the night.

At the edge of the stone circle, their hands still clasped, lay Edward and Camille, unmoving. Beyond the sacred stones the Druid sensed several figures melting away into the night. He did not try to follow them. He knew who they would be: Francois, eldest son of Malfoy, would be the one. The other would be Edward's younger brother, Sian.

The feud, come to a head this night, had begun generations before, when a Malfoy killed a Wheezley in a pub brawl — whether by accident or design, no one could remember. All their lives, Edward and Camille had been warned against each others' families, trained against them — bred against them. Against the dangers of alliance, against allowing the fires of enmity to ever burn too low. How they had ever come to fall in love with each other was as much a mystery to them both as it was to their families, but it had happened. And every Malfoy and Wheezley from France to Britain had cried out — ironically, in one accord — against the union. Between them, they had done everything within their powers to prevent it. They had pled, threatened, cajoled and bribed; Edward and Camille were not to be swayed. They loved each other, they said, with the kind of love that has a magic all its own: The strongest kind of magic, and it drew them together, and was not to be resisted until they belonged to one another.

It appeared that now the sons of Malfoy and Wheezley had chosen to take matters into their own hands. They would be dealt with later.

The Druid knelt, instead, by the still forms of the lovers. He saw that Edward's head was bleeding, and that blood came from Camille's mouth. It ran, rich and red and lifeless, down the sides of their heads and soaked into the ground beneath them.

"So my friends," he whispered, into the night. "Blood has been spilled to prevent your union: a high price to pay for the low crime of loving unwisely." He dipped the fingertips of one hand into the blood on Edward's head. His other hand, he touched to Camille's mouth. Then, he rose up to his knees and thrust his arms to the sky. He cried out, a strange, primal, keening cry, and when he spoke again, it was as though something else — a magic from outside himself — spoke through him.

"Now, as a high price has been exacted from you, I declare this night that a high price will be exacted from those who did this abominable thing. From this moment, your blood will cry out from the ground and not be satisfied until it is atoned for." He reached out and gently closed Edward's open eyes.

"Atoned for by blood or by marriage."

Chapter 1

Filius J. Flubberbuster stared bleakly through the wrought-iron gates that guarded the mansion before him, and groaned. He should have been home by now. Normally, by 5:42 on a Friday evening, he would have traded his boots for a pair of slippers and have been settling into his easy chair with a cup of tea. A cup of tea laced with Ogden's Old Firewhisky, he thought longingly, and gripped the bars of the gate. And he might have been home too, except that, just at 4:58 that afternoon, a baby had been born.

When the Curse-Minder had sounded in the office of Magical Curses and Contracts where Filius was Senior Secretary, every head in the office had jerked up to watch the message board by the door. When the message about the baby's birth had finished writing itself, Filius had looked around to find every single desk in the office suddenly empty. He had to give credit to the Juniors and Assistants in the office: they weren't stupid. None of them was about to stick around long enough to be assigned to this case.

He had sighed then, and turned his eyes determinedly away from the department clock, where the hand bearing his name was almost pointing to "Flooing Home." He reached up and caught the roll of parchments that swooped through the door at that moment, and took his cloak from the peg on the door. It looked like he was going to be the one to put his head into the serpent's mouth tonight.

As he stood outside the gates of Malfoy Mansion, he thought about the parchment in his hand and what it contained. For all he dreaded the encounter ahead, the professional part of him was intrigued by the mission. It was a rare curse, one that had not been called to account since the year 13 B.C.: The Curse of the Firstborn. He knew the words by heart. He should have: he'd been reading them over and over to himself from the time he'd left the office this afternoon:

The Firstborn Daughter of the one
Shall wed the other's Firstborn Son.
And live together as husband and wife
A year and a day, else forfeit the life
Of the Firstborn Child on either side
So shall the blood curse be satisfied.

There were Standards spelled out as well, specific to these families:

Since the original Firstborn Daughter, Camille Malfoy, had been twenty-five years old when she had been murdered on her wedding day, the Standard specified that the Firstborn Daughter who would take her place must marry by the age of twenty-five.

The wedding must take place in the same venue as the aborted one had, over one hundred years ago; a Ceremony of Rings within the Sacred Stone Ring.

The marriage must last a year and a day, according to the standard by which the Wizarding World had, until a century ago, judged a marriage to be successful.

Lucius Malfoy was going to hate this.

There was nothing else for it. He held his wand tip to the small square panel set in the stone column to the right of the gate.

"Ministry of Magic," he said wearily.

A moment later the gates swung silently in and Filius started up the walk. In spite of his trepidation, he looked around himself appreciatively as he approached the mansion. The wide walk was bordered on both sides with boulders of glossy black obsidian and beyond them the deep, velvet green lawns rolled away to tiers of spruce forest. He skirted a fountain in the middle of the walk, an iron statue of the Medusa, which spouted water from the mouths of the snakes that were her hair. It was almost lovely, in a... sinister way.

He had ascended the wide, marble steps of the house and was reaching for the cobra-head shaped doorknocker when this door, too, swung open. He looked down into the bulging eyes of the house-elf who had opened the door.

"Ministry of Magic," he told it.

The house-elf bowed low. "If Sir will follow me."

Filius followed the little creature through the cavernous entrance hall and through a complicated series of plushy-carpeted corridors. He had never been completely at ease with the way the rich kept these — these slaves to do all their work for them. He supposed his objection to it hearkened back to his University days in the 1960's — Equality for the Masses, and all that rot. Those days were long over of course, but the creatures still made him feel slightly guilty, bobbing about in those filthy rags they wore, saying, 'yes Sir' and 'no Sir', groveling and cringing. Filius always felt the absurd impulse to tip them for their services.

They stopped before a massive pair of walnut doors. The house-elf knocked twice before throwing his little shoulder against one of the doors and heaving it open. They stepped into a large study, furnished in purple velvet and deeply-burnished walnut paneling.

"Ministry of Magic to see Master," announced the house-elf.

A man rose from his seat behind the desk. "Leave us, Dobby."

"Very good, Master." With a series of little, scraping bows, the house-elf backed his way out the door, pulling it closed behind him.

"Ministry of Magic, eh?" said the man behind the desk, in a not entirely friendly way. He stepped forward and offered his hand, which Filius shook. It was icy cold, the grip a little too hard, as though the man wanted to make it clear which one of them was going to be in control of this conversation.

"Lucius Malfoy, as I'm sure you are well aware, or else you wouldn't be here. And my wife, Narcissa." He waved his hand to the right where a cool, regal-looking blonde was perched on a settee. A small child played with a toy broomstick on the carpet near her feet. The woman looked blankly at Filius — through him, really — before turning her attention back to the child. Lucius himself was a tall man, much taller than Filius, with sleek blond hair and chilly gray eyes. He peered down at the Ministry Official as though he were examining a particularly loathsome specimen of mold in a petri dish.

"Well, what can we do for you?" he said imperiously.

"Filius Flubberbuster, sir, Department of Magical Curses and Contracts." Filius willed himself not to click his heels and bow.

Lucius' gaze travelled slowly up and down him, and Filius was painfully conscious of his own thinning hair and bulging midriff. Before this wealthy, sophisticated man he felt clumsy and plebian and about twelve years old. Just do your job, he told himself desperately.

"I am here to inform you," he began, a trifle too loudly, "that at 4:58 this afternoon Molly Weasley, wife of Arthur Weasley, gave birth to a baby girl."

Lucius frowned, a faint furrow that appeared between his well-shaped eyebrows but hardly extended to mar the calm of his perfect face. After a pause, his frown gave way to a smile, and he allowed a low, indulgent chuckle. "A girl! Very funny, Flubberbuster. A good joke! But you won't trip me up on that one." He shook his finger playfully at Filius. "It is not possible that Arthur Weasley has fathered a girl." Although he smiled, Lucius Malfoy did not look amused in the least. On the contrary, he looked quite dangerous.

He went on. "You are either joking or you are misinformed, Flubberbuster. Weasleys don't have girls, you see." He smiled as though he and Filius were sharing a private joke, laughing over someone else's stupid mistake. "They don't have girls any more than Malfoys have girls."

Filius did not get the joke. "You... you say that, sir," he stuttered, "as if it were a foregone conclusion."

"Perhaps it... is," said Lucius, slowly and succinctly, as if giving a rather obvious hint to a slightly dim child.

Filius was puzzled. "Certainly sir, girls are not common in either family, but I assure you that not only is it possible, but it has happened."

Lucius' expression of amusement turned to one of anger. Filius forged ahead. "I am therefore obliged to deliver this to you..." he held out a roll of parchments, sealed and tied with the green Ministry of Magic ribbon. "It is the Curse Standard pertaining to Arthur Weasley's daughter and your..." he glanced uneasily at the child playing on the carpet "your son."

Lucius' voice grew deadly low and calm. " Narcissa," he said, his eyes holding Filius' in a way that Filius found frightening, " Narcissa, take Draco to the nursery."

The woman did not argue. With a frightened glance at the Secretary, she scooped the child off the floor and, ignoring his screams of protest at being separated from his broomstick, hurried out of the study.

When they had gone, Lucius indicated the seat she had vacated on the settee. Filius sat, noting vaguely that the seat was not warm as a seat usually is when someone has been sitting there. As if there were no warmth at all in the woman...

Lucius settled himself behind his desk again, folding his hands carefully, ensuring that he was fully in control of himself before he spoke. When he did speak, his voice was chillingly quiet.

"You are speaking, I believe, of the Curse of the Firstborn."

Filius nodded.

"I know all about the curse," Malfoy continued. "And I am going to share a little secret with you, Flubberbuster ." He leaned forward. Unconsciously, Filius recoiled.

"I happen to know," Lucius said, in a low voice, "that the ancestors on both sides — Malfoy and Weasley — took great care to ensure that the Curse of the Firstborn would never become an... issue." His voice hissed strangely over the word, and Filius shuddered. Lucius lowered his voice still more, so that the Secretary had to strain to hear. "Do you think it is an accident that neither the Malfoys nor the Weasleys have borne a girl in over two hundred years? It is no accident! Our ancestors arranged it, you see, as a means of... er... circumventing the Curse. A Filial Charm, I believe it was. No girls in either family line, only boys. That's what the Filial Charm does."

Filius frowned. "But sir, Filial Charms are only ninety-nine percent effective."

Lucius went on as though Filius had not spoken. "You'll understand why then, in light of all provision against this very thing coming to pass, I must question whether... whether or not the brat is really Arthur's. If she is not, of course, the Curse will not pertain to her. Or to us." Lucius sat back, looking extremely smug.

Filius tried not to let his loathing for the man show in his face. Arthur and Molly Weasley were one of the most devoted couples he had ever known. He'd eat his own wand sideways if the baby wasn't Arthur's. He said none of this to Malfoy however, only stood and placed the roll of parchments on the man's desk.

"It is your right, of course sir, to demand a full enquiry into the matter. If your investigation unearths foul play, the case will be taken up with the MLES. Otherwise, you can expect to hear from my department again when your son comes of age." He went to the door, resisting the sudden, obsequious urge to knuckle his forelock at Malfoy. "I'll find my own way out. Good day to you sir."

It was not until he had hurried down the walk and was safely outside the iron gates that Filius felt he could breathe easily again. He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. On the whole, he thought, it could have gone much worse.

At the end of the drive was an Apparition Port; Filius headed toward it. Somehow, he dreaded the next visit more than the last one. It was one thing to bring bad news to a slimy git like Lucius Malfoy, but quite another to bring it to a respected friend.

He stepped into the Port and pulled out his wand. Giving it a twist, he muttered, "St. Mungo's Hospital, Birthing Centre."