A/N: A Dean and Pansy chapter for carrotcucumber and Dumbledore's Mum.

Disclaimer: I do not own any part, or whole, of Harry Potter.

Dean x Pansy

He stood peering hopefully out his bedroom window, like he had done every morning for a week, praying fervently that today would be the day that the letter came. He had been waiting every day for three hours – from eight until eleven (which were normal posting hours) – for seven days now. He was two hours into his watch and beginning to think that it was a hopeless case, the letter was not coming today.

Suddenly, a very tiny grey speck appeared in the far distance, dark against the white clouds. Dean strained to see if it was an owl. It certainly looked like one.

As the owl grew closer, its' shape grew more defined and Dean could clearly see a letter clamped in its beak. He found himself actually praying to God, he was a Muggle, he figured that God still applied to him, that the letter bore good news. It had to bring good news.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the owl landed gracefully on his window sill and Dean yanked the letter away. It hooted disdainfully and ruffled its' feathers, Dean threw it a treat. Once it had departed again, he sat on his bed, holding the letter in his open hands. Shaking hands, he noticed, that was a little pathetic.

Slowly and carefully, ensuring that he did not tear the letter at all, it was too precious to rip; he slid his finger under the flap and broke the seal. It was a purple seal with a fat 'M' in the centre. It was the letter. It was a Ministry letter. Today was the day. Was he going to be lucky?

He slid the letter out and scanned it eagerly.

'To Mr D. Thomas,

We are obliged to inform you that your request for an appeal has been accepted.

Although, the legal loophole you applied under has now been closed, the law will still apply to your hearing.

The hearing will be on 29th of September, at 10am, in Courtroom Ten. Please arrive promptly as the hearing will not be delayed for any reason. Until the hearing has been completed, you will not be obliged to partake in a marriage to Miss P. Parkinson.

You are free to enlist the services of a lawyer, or if you so wish, you can argue your case alone. We enclose details of a Ministry run law service, please feel free to contact them for help and advice.

A duplicate of this letter has been sent to Miss Parkinson; however, to avoid conflict in evidence and the ruining of a case, we do ask that the two of you have no further unsupervised contact.

Yours,

Mr P. Weasley

(on behalf of the Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt)

Dean whooped loudly and punched the air – he was getting a hearing, this had to be good news.

He'd been angry and nervous as everyone else had been when the new law had been introduced. However, he had hoped, along with every other male in the country, that he would get someone, you know… decent. As it turned out, he hadn't. He'd been lumbered with the awful Pansy Parkinson. He didn't know a lot about her, but what he did know he didn't like. She was a Slytherin, which was enough to put him off her for starters. Secondly, she had been rather infatuated with Draco Malfoy. This made her akin to the devil, in his book. Thirdly, she had tried to betray Harry in the Final Battle. She was effectively a Voldemort supporter. She'd been an enforcer under the Carrow's regime, he'd later learnt. So she was cruel and unkind and vicious. She wasn't sounding like ideal marriage material.

She was pretty much the opposite of Dean's ideal woman. His ideal girl was a Gryffindor, or a Ravenclaw at a push, pretty, kind and completely in love with him. Pansy was none of these things. Why on earth would he want to marry her? The Ministry had said that personalities would be taken into account, so why had they been matched? She was nothing like him. It seemed, to him, that the Ministry had simply pulled the names out of a hat. Actually, they probably had some magical way of randomly matching things. He bet that they hadn't even looked at the pairings properly, just matched them and stuck the names on letters and hadn't thought anymore about it.

When he had finally gotten over the horrible shock, he had put every second of time he had (and he did have an awful lot of time – Hogwarts didn't start again until November, his family had to go back to work and school and his friends were all busy getting married) into finding a way out. It had been tricky, frustrating, time consuming and tiring but he had finally found a legal loophole which gave him a hearing.

Now he had the hearing, he had to work on a case. After all, he had to win. The consequences if he didn't were hard to even think about. He could not marry that Parkinson thing.

He grabbed a pad of notepaper and began scrawling down ideas he would use in his case. Definitely something about mismatched personalities, mention the war…yes, definitely the war, draw on how she was a Voldemort supporter….yeah, tried to betray Harry.

He had to win this, he was going to win this, he needed to win this.

-

The owl came as a bit of a shock to her. Of course, she hadn't wanted to marry Dean but she hadn't thought of doing anything about it. Everyone said that there was no way around it and she had believed them. She wasn't used to independent thinking; everything in her life had been handed to her on a golden platter. Why should she try and think of a solution to a problem, if someone else would do it for her?

It wasn't like there was any other choice of prospective suitors – everyone was taken. Even Draco, with his money and 'name', hadn't been able to get out of it.

She had simply cried for a long time and then resigned herself to it. She hadn't spoken to Dean, he hadn't contacted her either. She didn't really know anything about him, she thought he had been in some of her classes but she'd never spoken to him.

One of her friends had said he was the one who had dated Ginny Weasley before Harry Potter did. Another friend had said he had once played Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Draco had told her he was a Mudblood.

That was all she needed to know. Clearly, he would come from a poor, Muggle family. She had decided resolutely to never have anything to do with them. She was a respectable Pureblood family, one of the big ones who had not been utterly destroyed in the war. Many families, such as the Malfoys, had had their names blackened by declaring their support for Voldemort. The Parkinsons had never gotten involved; she had stayed at Hogwarts, protected by her name and good lineage and never said anything about Voldemort. It was a good survival strategy – the Parkinson name was still strong, none of her family had been sentenced to Azkaban yet her family had never been tarred by associated with Mudbloods and blood traitors.

Dean also, clearly, had awful taste – Ginny Weasley! So yes, everyone thought she was pretty but still…a Weasley. How low could one person sink? The Weasleys were the very epitome of bad taste for Pansy. She liked wealth and power and beauty and money and luxury. The Weasleys were common, associated with the most ghastly people, were poor and lived like Muggles. Her very worst nightmare had been being paired with a Weasley. At least she had escaped that horror.

She would have liked to have been paired with anyone who was Slytherin and wealthy. A year ago, she would have done anything to marry Draco. Now, she wasn't so sure. The Malfoy name was weak, hated, despised, blackened; it would not be good for her family if she'd married him.

Clearly, this Dean would not be bringing much to her family, nothing of use anyway. He would be the first Muggleborn ever to be part of the family, ever. This was embarrassing for her; she had let her family down. Her parents had been horrified; her grandparents had tried to invoke ancient wards that prevented such a marriage.

However, a light might just have appeared at the end of the tunnel. This letter might save her from this horrible marriage.

It said that Dean had managed to find a loophole and used it…they had been granted a hearing and did not have to marry before the hearing. This was good. This was very good; if they won the hearing then they would not be made to marry.

The chances of winning were…hard to predict. On the one hand, it was being held by the Wizengamot, they were fair, impartial and unlikely to conform to what the Ministry wanted. Also, the two of them were both fighting against the same thing. Neither of them actually wanted the marriage, this would make the case stronger. They would both be working on it, this would strengthen their arguments, help the case.

However, the Ministry was really cracking down on rebels to this law, cracking down hard. They had to enforce this hated law; if wrongdoers went unpunished then everyone would be rebelling against the law. Even if they were not made to marry each other, Pansy reckoned that they would be assigned other partners.

She had read in Witch Weekly all about Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter running away together. She had read that they were thought to be getting married, a legal expert had said that if they got married they would be unable to marry their assigned spouses and allowed to remain together. This would mean that their previous fiancées would be left unmarried. There had also been a few suicide cases, people driven to kill themselves by their pairings. This left a few people unassigned and unmarried. She would probably be matched with one of those.

That would be humiliating – marrying a left over, an unwanted person – but still preferable to marrying the Mudblood.

She rang the bell by her dressing table to call for a house elf. One appeared almost instantly and bowed deeply. She wrinkled her nose minutely, she didn't like house elves or having to deal with them, however they were efficient she did have to admit. They always did their work well and quickly.

"How can I help Miss?"

"I need you to find out who the best lawyer in Britain is and then hire him or her for me." She commanded, "That's all." She turned away, the house elf bowed again and departed.

She permitted herself a brief smile – she was going to get out of this marriage, she would not marry a Mudblood.

A/N - IMPORTANT - I will not be able to write at all next week (Monday 28th, Sept - Sunday 4th, Oct). I will be updating again from Monday!