"So, what's on for the weekend?" Ron asked as they ate at their usual spots Friday morning.
"Oh, you know, just heading out for a drink with Draco and Hermione tonight," Pansy replied cheerfully, taking a bite of her toast before reaching for her coffee, strong with one sugar.
"Are you? So am I," Ron blinked, wondering why Hermione hadn't mentioned that they were both invited.
"Well, looks like we can head over together then."
He eyed her, wondering why she'd said that so casually, before McGonagall caught his eye with a raised brow.
"Yeah, sure," He replied with a smile, though inwardly he was feeling a little annoyed that Hermione didn't just be honest and tell them they were all invited. He already spent half his week with Pansy Parkinson, he didn't need to spend his weekend with her too. If he had have known, maybe he wouldn't have bothered saying yes to begin with.
"Meet me at the gates at 7?" Her tone conveyed a question, but she was already walking off to her first class of the day.
He sighed, didn't seem like he had much of a choice.
Ron and Pansy had met at the gates as planned, apparated to Diagon Alley and walked silently together to the Leaky Cauldron, where they were meeting the group for drinks.
On arrival they found Hermione, Draco, Harry and Ginny all seated and chatting, each with a firewhisky in hand.
"You're here!" Hermione called out; her voice sweet as it always got when she was a few drinks in.
Ron grinned, giving her a large kiss on the cheek and hugged her tightly, proceeding to greet Harry with their secret handshake, Ginny with a kiss on the cheek and a nod to Draco, who returned the gesture.
After they were all settled in, Draco whispered something in Hermione's ear and she nodded eagerly, a bright smile on her face.
"We have some news, and we wanted to tell you all in person at the same time," Draco started before looking to his wife expectantly.
"We're getting married!" Hermione happily received the squeals of delight and bear hug from Ginny, followed by Harry shortly after.
As they pulled away, she stopped, looking at Ron who was still sitting there processing. Hermione was getting married. Hermione was getting married to Malfoy. Malfoy.
He realised they were all staring at him, so he cleared his throat and offered a smile, pulling Hermione into a tight hug.
"Congratulations," He whispered to her, with a squeeze of her hand.
"Well I think a toast is in order!" Pansy called, gesturing for the waiter to come over and ordering a glass of champagne for each of them.
"To the new couple!"
They cheered and clinked glasses, Hermione instantly talking about all the wedding preparations that they needed to get started on, Draco chiming in that he couldn't wait to marry his beautiful bride to be.
"Are you alright?" Harry nudged Ron later in the night.
"What? Oh yeah, of course I am, mate," He responded, plastering a smile on to his face.
Harry gave him a look that said he didn't believe him, and Ron sighed.
"Its not that I'm not happy for her. Does it have to be Malfoy though?"
Harry frowned, "He's about to marry our Hermione, don't you think you could call him Draco?"
Ron was getting irritated, "No, Harry, I don't think I can."
Their attention was pulled back to the main conversation as Hermione spoke up, "Well, I mean why don't we get married in a few weeks then?"
"What? Babe, I thought you wanted a big, white wedding? The perfect wedding?" Draco asked.
Hermione snorted, "Not really, that seems to be what you want. Which I'm happy to do if it makes you happy. But if not, why wait? We love each other. Nothing would make me happier than to call you my husband."
Draco's expression softened and he kissed her quickly, "Wow, okay. Let's get married on the 30th?"
"I can't wait!" Hermione laughed and offered another toast before being pulled into a long kiss by her fiancé.
As the group got distracted with wedding planning once more, Harry tried again, "Ron, I think you just need to maybe try a bit harder with Draco. It's becoming pretty clearly he's not going anywhere."
"Well I'm sorry I can't just get over the fact that these people sold you out, Harry. If they had their way, then you wouldn't be here. And I just can't live with knowing that you might not have been around because there were cowards around who were only thinking of themselves."
Harry sighed and began to respond when they heard Pansy's chair push back abruptly and she offered a quick congratulations to the couple before stalking out of the pub.
Harry pursed his lips, while Draco asked what had happened and Ron grew frustrated.
"Fine I'll take care of it," Ron muttered, saying a quick goodbye to the table, who watched on with worry towards his retreating back.
He ran out to the main street and looked in each direction, searching for Pansy's petite figure in the dark.
"Parkinson, wait!" He called as he saw her trudging slowly in the direction of the apparition point.
She kept walking so he called out again. She finally turned to stop as he caught up to her.
"What do you want?" Pansy asked, feeling exasperated. She'd never live down her mistakes, she just knew it.
"Look, I know-" Ron began a speech that he had not thought through before a sharp voice interrupted him.
"Oh, so the rumours are true."
Pansy cringed. Just what she needed. She couldn't deal with this while she felt so hurt and ashamed. She slowly turned around to see Gardenia Parkinson standing behind her, eyeing off Ron next to her with distaste.
"Hello mother."
"No explanation? No wonder you don't want anything to do with me anymore, you're clearly too ashamed of your new companions." She sneered at the red headed Weasley.
Ron's eyes narrowed but he said nothing, unconsciously moving closer to Pansy almost instinctively. He could already feel the tension radiating off Pansy from where he was standing.
"I have nothing to be ashamed of." Pansy knew the worst was coming.
"How sweet," Gardenia purred, "Thinking that you're one of them now. Well you are, hanging out with dirty blood and blood traitors, this scum," She spat towards Ron, "You should be ashamed of yourself."
Pansy breathed in sharply, "You know what mother, you can insult me all you like, but you don't get to insult him. Ron is brave and loyal and all of the things that you will never be. You don't get to decide that you're better than someone else because of your blood!"
"Actually, I do. We pure bloods know better than to think everyone equal. Why can't you understand? We are better than them. Your father and I have tried to show you. What changed? You used to believe Pansy. When we were a family." Gardenia had an almost serene facial expression as she talked, reaching out to touch Pansy who pulled away roughly.
"I was twelve years old when you let those disgusting human beings into my house. I was fifteen. FIFTEEN. When you let that bastard that you refer to as my father torture me in front of a room full of death eaters at the request of the Dark Lord. You just stood by and let him do it. And we both know that that wasn't the only time. You make me sick. It actually makes me physically ill to think that I was created from you. How could you do that to me? How could you let your only daughter be tortured on the kitchen floor? Why didn't you love me enough to protect me from that monster? How can you look at me now and tell me that I should want anything to do with you?"
Pansy was angry. Her fists clenched at her sides. Her hair was sparking with magic from her pent-up frustration. All the anger she had felt but had to hold her tongue about over the years was coming out in full force.
"You know what? I'm done with whatever this is. If I ever have children, I will be nothing like you. I will protect them and love them, and I will die before I let anything harm them. You don't own me anymore."
She let out a defeated breath as she near whispered, "I hope it was all worth it."
Pansy shook her head before pushing on past her so-called mother. She was drained. She had gotten two blocks before she noticed that Ron was walking next to her, watching with concern.
"I'm fine," she offered before he could speak, "Really, I'm just tired."
Ron pursed his lips but continued to walk with her.
As they reached the apparition point, he placed his hand on her wrist for her to side-along, knowing that she was too out of it to apparate herself. She wished she had the energy to protest, but silently obliged knowing he'd only want to argue about it.
When they were finally back at Hogwarts, she let him escort her slowly through the grounds.
"Can I ask you something?" Ron's strained voice pulled her out of her thoughts as they reached the Whomping Willow and she turned to face him, waiting.
Pansy felt awkward and too tired to school her features to hide the devastation and embarrassment she was feeling.
"Did the other Slytherins go through that too? The Death Eaters in their homes and being tortured for fun?"
Pansy didn't respond for a long time. "Yes."
Ron let out a shaky breath. "I'm so, so, sorry. I never knew that was what it was like for any of you. I was so caught up in being loyal to the cause of the light that it never occurred to me that some people didn't have choices. That it was a matter of survival and you had to show support for something you didn't believe in just to avoid being tortured into believing or worse."
Pansy felt her eyes glaze over, "No one knew. It's not your fault. Draco and I tried to look after each other as best as we could. He's the reason I wanted to get so good at brewing potions. The um, the torture got more frequent as we got older, particularly for Draco and the aftereffects were affecting me so badly that it was getting more obvious. I started brewing Professor Snape's recipes for the aftereffects of the cruciatus curse among other healing potions. It helped that I was asked to brew for the infirmary, so it didn't look too suspicious and I was able to just make a bit extra each time. Now that I know he was on the side of light I always wonder if that was intentional on his part."
Ron ran a hand through his hair and looked at the petite girl in front of him. "I don't even really know what to say. You used to pay out on me so badly and I honestly hated you for it. I couldn't understand why you would be so terrible when you didn't even know me. Now, here we are years later, and I get it. You couldn't have been friendly to me even if you had wanted to. I was horrible to you. At the time I thought it was fair, that we gave, and we got, but now I look back and I'm just so sorry. You had to go through all of that at home and then you'd come to school and would have to put up with…me."
Pansy's heart was breaking. He just looked so, broken.
"It's not something I ever planned on sharing with anyone, Ron. I'm sorry that you had to know."
She let out a yelp when she felt him embrace her, so firmly that she was having trouble breathing, but it was appreciated none the less.
He held her and she started crying. Ron tried to comfort her by stroking her lightly on her back, whispering that it was all okay now.
Pansy wasn't sure how long it was until they eventually sank to the ground. She pulled back slightly and wiped at her eyes and started crying all over again when she saw Ron discreetly wipe at his own eyes under the pretence of being tired.
Very soon they were both clinging to each other, years of desperation, grief and despair taking over as they mourned all that they had lost, all that they hadn't been able to get past and everything they feared could one day happen again.
After what might have been minutes or hours, Pansy shivered, and Ron instantly conjured what seemed like a knitted jumper for her and a blanket before pulling her back to him and cuddling in.
She realised that he needed this as much as she did, so she allowed it, silently crying until she couldn't cry anymore. Though she couldn't hear him either, she was sure he was doing the same.
Ron woke to Hagrid's roosters making their morning rise and shine wake up call. He groaned slightly and cracked an eye open, only to see Pansy on his chest looking around at the view of the grounds.
He stretched and felt her move off him to give him some space to sit up.
It was awkward. What do you say to the girl that you've hated almost all your life when you now realise that it was unjustified and its too late to take it all back?
"Thanks, Ron," Pansy broke him out of his avalanching thoughts as she moved to take off his favourite Weasley jumper, maroon wool with a large golden R on the front.
"No, keep it, you might be cold," He started, and she nodded shyly, pulling it back down over her legs.
"Okay." There was another awkward pause before she continued, "I guess I'll see you round?"
Ron nodded, watching her offer a nod of her own in return before heading up to the castle. He stayed behind, watching her until he could see her reach the castle steps.
Letting out a shaky breath he didn't know he'd been holding; he ran a hand through his hair before beginning his own slow trek up the hill to the castle.
As he thought about everything that had happened in such a short time, a fleeting feeling crossed the back of his mind, warmth at the sound of his first name on her lips.