Disclaimer: Recognize it? Not mine.
Should've Known Better
You were told that you're too young to attend the Yule Ball, but it doesn't trouble you. You know that, sooner rather than later, someone your Mummy will approve of will ask you to escort him. You're Astoria Greengrass, after all, and guys would rather take you than Millicent Bullstrode or Henriette Yaxley or practically any other girl, so it's simply a matter of time.
What you don't expect is for the first suitor to be Justin Finch-Fletchley. Maybe you should have -you know he fancies you- but you never thought he'd gather the courage to ask you out, after months of watching you when he thought you weren't looking.
The words are out of his lips. No more than a second later, the words are out of yours.
"I'm very sorry, Finch-Fletchley," you say. "I'm going to have to decline."
"That's alright." He looked away with a broken gaze. "I should've known better."
You want to feel bad for him, but you can't. Instead, you feel that he's right and that he should've known better. After all, he's a doe-eyed, curly-haired, ever-smiling Hufflepuff, and you would've found him cute if you didn't know better.
However, when you think about it, you realize that he can't possibly know better, because he doesn't know that you've asked Daphne about him.
(You don't tell Daphne that you've caught him staring at you in the Great Hall and in the Library. You don't tell Daphne that he blushes a deep shade of pink whenever your eyes meet his. You don't tell Daphne that you suspect he's the one who sent you a rose on your birthday. Daphne doesn't need to know, and you know better than to tell her.)
He doesn't know that you've asked Daphne about him, so there's no way he knows what Daphne's answer was.
Then again, he might as well know, for his now-pained eyes see the result.
That's when you understand that you can reject his proposal as you did, as politely as your Mummy taught you, as tastefully as only Daphne knows how. But you understand that it makes no difference.
You might as well be truthful and call him a Mudblood instead.