Prologue: June 1999

"Should we tell him?" Theo asked in a whisper, sounding panicked.

"Are you fond of your bollocks?" Blaise snorted mockingly from above his bowl of cornflakes.

"Quite partial to them, as it happens, yes..." The boy chanced a glance down towards the end of the Slytherin table, watching his blonde haired friend engaged in what looked like an intense conversation with a pissed off Pansy Parkinson... which was nothing unusual.

"Then you know the answer to that question." Blaise's eyes seemed to rest over at the Gryffindor table for a second, squinting as if trying to solidify an idea within his mind. "They don't need to know."

He then gave Theo a pointed look and pointed at him with his breakfast spoon. "They never need to find out."

"But what if-" Theo felt the rising bile of sickness kicking up a notch again. "-what if neither of them marry before they're 30-"

"Shhh!" Blaise shook his head and kicked his friend under the table, causing a small yelp to erupt from his dark haired friend. "Jesus Christ, mouth almighty!" Blaise took a deep, calming breath. "Draco's as good as married off to Parkinson already, and Granger-"

Theo's eyes shot in her direction, where she sat happily nestled into Ron Weasley's side as they sat eating breakfast together. She was blissfully unaware of the potion she had mistakenly drank last night in her drink at their end of year party... a potion intended for someone else.

"-Granger is absolutely cuckoo for that Ginger, lanky streak of piss that appears to be surgically attached to her side at this very moment in time." Blaise said in a quiet voice. "She'll be getting dragged down the aisle by that ogre before she's twenty..."

"But what if they're not?" Theo was panicking again, he could feel it. "What if they find out or end up friends somewhere down the line and then -"

"No."

"But-"

"Don't even-"

"They might even end up being attracted to-"

"Bugger off Theodore, it won't happen." Blaise said in a final tone, eating his last bite of cornflakes. "There's not a chance - there has to be an attraction there in the first place for the potion to even work at all, and that is never going to happen, is it?"

And as Blaise walked off, Theo gave another glance over at Hermione Granger before his eyes fell yet again upon Draco.

Yes... yes, there needed to be an attraction there in the first place for the potion to even start to work, didn't there? And there was no way on Gods green Earth that that was ever going to occur...

It would never happen.

Not between Granger and Malfoy.

Not by the time they were 30.

Not in a million fucking years.