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The first sign appeared when a well-publicized interview with Blaise Zabini took a turn. It was not a very surprising turn since Rita Skeeter was the one conducting the interview. After a few questions about Blaise's spy work for the Order during the war, Rita moved on to his fellow spies; Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy.
She asked Blaise how long Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger had been seeing each other. In response, Blaise's beautiful Mediterranean skintone (voted #2 in the Witch Weekly poll- after Ginny Weasley's cream n' roses) turned a whole shade paler. He inquired how Rita Skeeter could even prove that the relationship was real. Rita replied that she couldn't.
But the famous gossip columnist did not hesitate to serve up her trademark question: "Are you denying the existence of the relationship, then?" As Rita looked up from her Dicto-quill, she observed that Blaise's Italian nostrils looked even more prominent when they were flared. A moment later, the ex-Order spy abruptly walked out the door. A footnote in the article summarized the rest of the interview; Blaise Zabini vowed never to return to Rita Skeeter's office. He followed his promise with several choice insults, one of which was that he wished he had listened to Harry Potter's advice about beetle-eyed, duck-mouthed journalists.
Readers of the Daily Prophet, Witch Weekly, and Wizarding Times were perplexed. Blaise Zabini, (along with his two Slytherin comrades) was never known to lose their cool. Why was he so upset?
The readers who had years of experience deciphering interviews and worshipping gossip columns were more than happy to enlighten their ignorant peers. When a former Dumbledore's Army member didn't jump at a chance to deny something, it was because they couldn't.
That morning across the Wizarding community, many cups of tea were spilled, many mouthfuls of pumpkin juice were hastily spit out, and many eyebrows (narrow, bushy, trimmed, and inexistent) were raised to their maximum capacities.
Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy were going out.
It was official and no one could quiet down the high-pitched shrieks of joy heard around Britain for the rest of the day.
After all, who doesn't love a good war romance?
Blaise Zabini ran for his life. He Apparated immediately to his family home after leaving...that woman. Yes, Rita Skeeter would henceforth be known as that woman in Blaise's vocabulary. That woman was most likely going to be writing another article tomorrow about Blaise Zabini's brutal murder at the hands of one Draco Malfoy and his lovely accomplice, Hermione Granger. What was even worse was that no one would care that Blaise was murdered. The public (who loved to be fed good doses of celebrity romance every hour), would skim past the gory details and let their eyes focus on the fact that Draco valued Hermione's honor enough to kill his best friend for her. Fan girls would start worshiping that pale-assed bastard even more than before, never caring that the friendlier (and hotter) Order spy was rotting in his poorly dug grave.
No. Blaise could see the future, and he could not let all that happen. He needed to take action. If he still had any of those DA reconnaissance skills left in him, now would be the time to use them.
Now, where would Blaise start? He knew that Draco never read the tabloids so the cause of Blaise's likely death would probably be in the hands of one Hermione Granger. Hermione never admitted to reading gossip columns or war interviews, but Blaise had caught her hands on a Witch Weekly more than once. Her claims of "just giving fun reading material to Draco's poor elf Muffie" were perhaps the worst excuses he has ever heard in his life.
Blaise couldn't hide all of the gossip magazines in the world from Hermione...so he decided to make it so that she would never be able to look at the incriminating articles.
After all, Blaise Zabini has always been handy with a Visualization Charm.
Muffie the house elf was very confused. If she wasn't a young elf of only 99 years, she would have blamed her confusion on her diminishing eyesight. But Muffie was young (regardless of what Ms. Hermione thought), so Muffie knew that she could trust her protruding, orb-like eyes. She was sure that the frontcover of Ms. Hermione's new Witch Weekly did not show a picture of an French model dying on the runway. It was a picture of Ms. Hermione and Ms. Draco, captioned by the words "SECRET ROMANCE UNVEILED?" in pink cursive, followed by "THE UNTOLD STORY OF DRAMIONE- CONFIRMED!"
But then Ms. Hermione once again exclaimed to Muffie, "Merlin, will you believe what is happening these days? A witch will starve herself to death just to be the last one walking down Vunatella Dursace's catwalk show! Did these fashion industry airheads learn nothing about managing their priorities after the war that just happened?"
Muffie shook her head and was about to correct her master's girlfriend when Hermione's eyes suddenly widened.
"Muffie! I forgot! You didn't eat your Magikal Vitamins yet! I am so sorry for not reminding you sooner! Come, let's go get them, shall we?" Hermione had recently taken up the valiant duty of preserving Muffie's "depleting health."
Hermione gave an encouraging smile as she mistook Muffie's frown as an expression of excitement and took the elf by the hand; forgetting all about dead French models.
Pansy Parkinson was strolling down Diagon Alley in her new green pumps. They were the first shoes she had picked up after becoming engaged and they complemented her ring extremely well. Not that her ring needed to be complemented to be seen. It was a huge, 7 carat first-class emerald ring, with a light sprinkling of diamonds on the band. Emerald had always been her favorite stone. She didn't care much for the color green (her Slytherin school spirit never extended to the house colors), but every single woman in the Parkinson family have preferred emeralds to set their engagement rings, and Pansy was no exception. Emeralds were the symbol of Venus and eternal faith, after all. And with a world of cheating bastards, who didn't want a bit of reassurance?
Even more than that, Pansy's own mother had designed the ring for her when she was a little girl. Back then, she was still engaged to Draco and as it was customary, the ring was sent to the Malfoys for safekeeping. After the war, Lucius Malfoy locked himself up in his family home and had the nerve to refuse to give the ring back to Pansy! Luckily, Pansy had been able to persuade Narcissa to let go of an engagement that was obviously broken, but it had taken a mighty long trip for Draco and Pansy to finally get a hold of the emerald.
Blaise was ecstatic as well. He knew how much the ring meant to Pansy and he had even agreed to propose again with the right ring. But for now, Pansy needed the Malfoy insignia removed from her beloved emerald.
On her way to Knockturn Alley, the bride-to-be was sadly too deep in thought about the advantages of a strapless wedding dress to notice the photographer that was busy snapping shots of her ring.
An excerpt from page 6 of the Daily Prophet:
A certain black haired vixen in Slytherin green pumps was seen strolling towards Knockturn Alley today and those pumps were not the only green she was wearing! The blue-eyed beauty was sporting a one-of-a kind emerald engagement ring...with an insignia. An insignia belonging to a family of platinum blondes, whose heir has reportedly been dating another beauty. One who is definitely NOT sporting a ring. Switching beaus so fast, Mr. Malfoy? This reporter smells something fishy and it's definitely not those Knockturn Alley beetle eyes. You can see the visual proof for yourself, right here...
a/N: Ok, you can pretend the picture's there. Just visualize...yep? You see it? great! Please R and R!