The news of his upcoming nuptials had finally reached the ears of his parents. In his hand, Draco carried two very different letters from his mother and father, each telling him one thing he (deep, deep down) wanted to hear and one he (deep, deep down) wished was not true. The irony was not lost on him that even something as ridiculous and horrifying as marriage forced upon young adults by the Ministry of Magic would cause a conflict of interest and parenting skills between Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy—of course, that was unsurprising to Draco considering their distinctive takes on serving the Dark Lord, but still offered their only son up as the sacrificial lamb to save their family from inevitable ruin.

In similar fashion, both his parents found no use to fight the marriage law that would obligate Draco to marry someone not previously handpicked by them, even if it was the last thing he wanted to do.

Draco stopped when he turned the corner down an empty corridor, stuffing one letter into the pocket of his robes and balling the other. He stared at the knuckles pressing against the thin, white skin, popping out as he forced all his anger and magic to manifest there, turning the letter into ash. He opened his palm, watching as it seeped through the gaps of his fingers and onto the discarded belongings of someone sprawled on the corridor floor.

"Goyle," Draco called in an already annoyed drawl, "is there a reason why you're currently blockading this hall?"

Immediately, his old friend rose to his feet, dusting off his trousers and robes from the ash he had not known Draco let fall on him. "No reason," Goyle said, cheeks bright pink and a lopsided, odd smile on his mouth, "Just hanging out."

Draco raised a pale brow just as Pansy came around from the same turn the former had taken. She already had a twisted smirk on her red-painted lips; her distinguished, dark amusement revealed and visible, courtesy of her long, black hair being pulled back into a sleek ponytail with her emerald tie wrapped around her head as an accessory rather than a required item of her uniform.

"He's waiting to intercept his bride-to-be," Pansy told Draco with a sharp laugh. "He's been doing this for three days now, trying to pluck up the courage to ask Padma Patil if he can walk her to her lessons and carry her books. It's all rather pathetic, really."

"Is not," Goyle snapped back at her, but Draco noticed he was careful not to look over in his direction just in case he saw through the glaring lie. "And I'm not waiting for her. She just happens to walk this way and I happen to be here at the exact same time she does. It's just a coincidence."

As Pansy scoffed at his explanation, Draco said, "Leave him alone. If he fancies the Gryffindor, better for him. He has to marry her, after all."

"Gryffindor? Isn't Padma the Ravenclaw twin?" Pansy asked him before then turning to Goyle. "Wait. Which one are you marrying?"

"Padma," he replied with a firm nod of his head, but then that faraway, confused look he often got slowly crept up on him. "Pavarti? No. Padma. Gryffindor. Right, Draco?"

"I have no fucking clue, Greg," Draco told him with a shrug. "I repressed everything about that sorting after my name was called out. I can't help you."

Goyle let out a curse, grabbed his discarded, tattered schoolbag from the floor, and rushed the opposite way he needed to be headed in. In a flail of robes, laughter, and stomps, Draco thought he heard him say he needed to go check the documents they were given after the sorting, he only had to remember where he had stuffed them into.

"He needs Vincent." Draco turned away from Goyle's retreating figure, his previous frown still firmly in its place when he heard Pansy's voice. She reached to the back of her ponytail, twirling her hair around her skinny index finger, a laugh already bubbling at the base of her throat. "You know it's true. They weren't the smartest, that's for sure, but Greg depended on Vince for things we can't help him with."

"Crabbe's dead," Draco said as if she needed the reminder, as if it had not happened just a few weeks back. "Goyle's going to have to make it on his own."

"He shouldn't have to."

"Crabbe didn't have to start that fire, but he did. Now this is the consequence."

"This life is the consequence," Pansy corrected, that laugh echoing around the marbled corridor. Despite the cold humor she was clinging to, Draco saw her eyes glisten over at the weight her sentence actually packed. "In our ideal life, I wouldn't be marrying Weasley, would I?"

Draco did not want to dive into the complexity of the things left unsaid, so he gifted her a smirk of his own. "In a perfect world, you actually do marry Weaselbee because it is absolutely hysterical for the rest of us."

Pansy gave his right shoulder a shove before lacing her arm through his, pulling him in the direction they were originally taking before they intercepted Goyle. "As if it's not horrifying enough that I'm to wed that redheaded twat, but I think there's something seriously wrong with him."

"Hasn't there always been?"

"True," she huffed, "but it's something else. I expected him to fly off his broom at this shitty, fucked up engagement—as I've done, but if Moaning Myrtle starts accusing me of destroying her lavatory, you tell everyone I am not the type to vandalize school property—but he hasn't said a thing."

"Are you worried?"

Pansy laughed again, louder (phonier) this time. "I don't give a damn about Potter's sidekick, but if he's defective, I want a new one. The Ministry is not pawning off this broken Weasley on me when there are a thousand working ones living at the Burrow."

"Ask him about it. After all, communication is key for healthy marriages," Draco told her with a snort. "At least, that's what it says in the textbook the Ministry provided us."

"Reading it already? Salazar, Draco, you and the mudblood are actually made for one another—"

The rest of Pansy's sentence was interrupted by an abrupt, raspy yelp that fell out past her red lips when Draco shoved her against the corridor wall. His white-knuckled fists pressed against each of her shoulders, pinning her in place.

"Don't you ever," he hissed, inching closer to her, practically pressing his nose to hers so she could see the fury churning the molten metal in his eyes, "say that word in my presence again, do you understand me?"

"Yes, I understand," Pansy conceded immediately, flinching when his fingers started to dig their nails into her. "For fuck sakes, I get it. I'm sorry. Get off me now."

"You want to talk about Crabbe?" Draco said through his teeth, still not reeling his body back, "You want to talk about all the fucking people that we lost that aren't here, then say that word again—it'll remind you that they used it, that they were wrong, and that they died because of it. Do you want to join them, too?"

Pansy snaked her hand between them, smacking her palm against his chest in an attempt to push him back. "Are you threatening me, Malfoy?"

In the glisten that was back in Pansy's eyes, Draco saw his own reflection. He saw the fire in his silver glare that he often saw in his nightmares. It was what finally made him put distance between them.

"I'm trying to save you," he told her, slow and indifferent, his fury and regret disappearing into the cold mask even Pansy could not decipher. "We are about to marry two of the most coveted war heroes. Think about what that means for people like you and me."

Hermione was handing Harry and Ron their essays back, completely revised in blue ink, commentary in red, and corrections in green, when a frantic First Year stormed out of the classroom they were to enter for their Transfiguration lesson.

"Fire!" yelled the boy, crashing straight into Hermione, throwing his arms around her waist, screaming. "It's on me! Get it off!"

"You're all right, Alfie," said Lavender Brown as she exited the room, her pale, scarred face covered in dusty, grey smoke. She used the left sleeve of her singed robes to wipe at her cheek, squinting through her eyelashes that fluttered out ash. "Honestly, I put you out before you even noticed."

"He set my hair on fire!" screamed the First Year, pulling back from Hermione to point at the top of his head. Harry and Ron snickered at the hole of blonde locks that was missing.

Hermione elbowed Ron in the ribs, but frowned at both before turning to Lavender. "Why was Alfie on fire? Have I not said to you repeatedly that you cannot use First Years as personal errand boys and then retaliate when they get your orders wrong? It's completely unethical."

Lavender rolled her eyes, saying, "First of all, I don't do that anymore. I just cut their pay now. Secondly, this was all Seamus. McGonagall has him tutoring First Year Gryffindors who have his same talent for pyrotechnics."

"Talent?" scoffed Ron, dusting off his own robes from the ash Lavender was radiating. "Seamus can't think without setting something on fire. What was McGonagall thinking putting that thickhead in charge of other unexperienced wizards?"

"Ronald—"

"You're definitely one to talk," Lavender cut across Hermione's gasp of outrage over Ron's choice of words. "If it wasn't for Hermione and Harry constantly fixing your mistakes, you'd still be poking eyes out with your shitty wandwork and spitting out slugs. Or have you forgot, Weasley is our king?"

Harry exchanged a glance with Hermione, both completely aware of how Ron's fingers twitched to his right pocket, where they knew he kept his wand. The top of Lavender's lip quivered with an anger starting to bubble beneath the surface, but they were not afraid of what she could do because Lavender knew where the line was.

These days, Harry nor Hermione were convinced Ron knew what a line was. He was always toeing it, one step away from spitting out poison and burning bridges.

"Okay," said Harry, clearing his throat, "time for Transfiguration."

"Then maybe you have a type, Lav," said Ron, moving his shoulder from under Harry's palm set on turning him in the direction of the classroom. "And doesn't that say something about you?"

"I loved you," Lavender told him, her fists rattling at her sides, her blue eyes dark from the rings of smoke around her lids. "That's all I did despite your flaws, but you couldn't see that."

"I didn't love you," Ron returned, "and Seamus doesn't love you now. But you don't want to see that, so you'll settle for second best because that's all you're ever going to get and you know that."

Hermione closed her eyes even before she heard Lavender's hand collide against Ron's cheek. She let out a breath—the hatred, the resentment echoing off the hit and Lavender's skin penetrated Hermione's, too.

When she opened her eyes, the corridor was no longer occupied by only Gryffindors. Pansy and Draco stood a few feet from them, arms linked, and familiar, twisted smirks on their faces.

"I told you something was off with him." Pansy looked up at her fellow Slytherin, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at Ron. "And they want me to marry it."

At Pansy's voice, Ron blinked away from the hate in Lavender's eyes. For a moment, he was in a different place, in a different time when there was only sweet affection in that sapphire gaze, glittering like gems when she laughed at his jokes and kissed his lips red.

In a time when he was happy.

In a time when Fred laughed and cringed at the overly handsy couple.

"I'm sorry," muttered Ron, taking a step back, his shoulder hitting the wall. "I...I didn't mean it."

"You did," Pansy said before Lavender even had the chance to let out the puff of oxygen caught in her throat. "At least admit that you did mean it."

"I didn't—"

"You did," laughed Pansy. "People always mean the things they say when they're angry. And that's all you are nowadays, isn't it, Weasley?" She turned away from Ron and the growing splatter of pink on his cheek, her eyes bright with her dark amusement when they locked and Hermione and Lavender. "You two are so lucky you got out of being with this."

"Enough, Parkinson," said Hermione.

"Stop coddling him, Granger," Pansy huffed, rolling her eyes in a way that was an all too familiar exchange between the two witches. "He's angry. Let him be angry. That's the only way he's going to find out there's nothing at the end of it—Oi, where are you going?"

Ron had pushed himself off from against the wall, shoving his way past the Slytherins. Hermione called out for him, but Harry reached for her wrist before she took off chasing his footsteps.

"Parkinson's right," he told his best friend, an echo of a chuckle at the end when Harry noticed Hermione's outraged expression. "We've been putting a lid on him for weeks now. If he continues on this way, he's going to lose his friends." Harry then extended a hand out for Lavender, a nervous smile at the corner of his mouth. "Ginny's still back at Gryffindor Tower. We can get you cleaned up and be back for our lesson on time."

Tears blurred Harry's scarred, pink palm, but Lavender still reached for it. The knot in her throat wanted to dissolve into streams that seeped out of the corner of her eyes, wiping away the soot covering her cheeks, but she did not let it.

Lavender Brown swore never to cry over Ron Weasley ever again.

"You, too, Alfie. You better not try and clean up with magic. You might make things worse."

The First Year nodded at Harry, coming out from around Hermione. As Harry had done, he took one of Lavender's hands, both leading her away.

Pansy cocked her head to the side, reaching for the back of her ponytail in a way that Hermione could decipher was her surveying her. After all, Pansy had often looked at her the same way, like she was trying to figure out how Hermione existed at all.

"You still love him."

Hermione narrowed her brown eyes at the Slytherin witch. "Came up with that all on your own, Parkinson? Of course I love him. He's my best friend."

"He might be," countered Pansy, her index finger uncurling from around her hair as she stood tall, her chin rising so she could look at Hermione from under her nose in attempt to remind her that she still saw her as less despite a war between them, "but he broke your heart. You don't get rid of love that hurts so easily. It lingers, like a cut. You have to wait until the skin sows itself back together, red, raw, and stinging until there's no evidence left of what made you bleed."

"You don't know—"

"Of course I know," Pansy cut across whatever defense Hermione was about to create. She laughed again, nudging over to the quiet, observing Slytherin beside her. "He's my cut and Weasley is yours. Funny, isn't it, how we now have to marry what is left of each other's first love?"

Draco stilled when Hermione's gaze drifted from the trail of despair and anger Weasley had left behind to fall, dig, and examine the silver in his eyes. She was searching for evidence that he was more than what stood before her, an older, more damaged, more cowardly version of the boy who used to bully her because her blood wasn't old and perfectly curated like his had been through the centuries. She wanted evidence of what Pansy had said; she wanted to see complixities behind his masks of indifferences.

And that's what Draco would give her—jagged, jigsaw pieces to figure out how to put back together.

Win Granger over at any cost, Lucius Malfoy had said in the letter tucked into the left pocket of Draco's trousers, play the part to steal her heart. We need it to survive. Do not fail our family.