*The arrangement was a gilded cage, a prison of obligation. I, Draco Malfoy, found myself bound to a woman I barely knew, a woman named Lisa Evans. The union was a strategic maneuver, a dance of power orchestrated by our families. My father, Lucius, and her father, Rodrick, were intertwined in the Ministry, their ambitions as tangled as the roots of a cursed tree. Marriage was the price of my freedom, a shield against the Dark Lord's looming shadow. Refusal meant a Death Eater's mark, a fate far...