Disclaimer: As always, copyright's belong to J.K. Rowling, etc, etc. Marigold, Pierre and Glin belong to me.
Author's note: Hopefully, this series of small vignettes will satisfy some of the people who've been begging to see certain individuals make an appearance.
Draco stared at the bit of parchment in his hand. Silver embossed letters winked at him as he tried to figure out an appropriate response...
"Mr. Draco Malfoy regrets to inform Miss Virginia Weasley that he shall be unable to attend, due to a previous engagement..."
"Mr. Draco Malfoy will be unable to attend Miss Virginia Weasley's Costume Gala because he is feeling under the weather..."
"I'm not coming ~ Malfoy."
"Mr. Draco Malfoy wishes that the Minister would stay out of his damned life."
"It is with great regret that Mr. Draco Malfoy must inform Miss Virginia Weasley that he shall be unable to attend due to his inability to control his libido. As this event will be held in mixed company, he feels it would be inadvisable to attend, warranting his inability to be in the same room with Miss Weasley without forcibly removing her clothing and shagging her senseless."
Unfortunately, years of social obligation weighed heavily on his shoulders, and he ended up scribbling out something his mother would have been proud of on the provided R.S.V.P. slip.
"Mr. Draco Malfoy would be delighted to attend Miss Weasley's Appointment Costume Gala. He would prefer the chicken marsala to the beef wellington."
Ron stubbed his cigarette out nervously into the ashtray sitting on the café table before them. He really had to quit smoking. It was going to ruin his lungs. Fleur looked disinterested as usual, but was laying the accent on rather thickly, which generally signified her annoyance.
"Ronald, I do not zee why vee must go. She is a silly little girl who won't last the year as mistress of magic."
"Minister. It's not a gender thing, it's the title of the job, regardless of who's in office," he corrected her. Funny, he'd found her complete and total ignorance to be endearing once. Now, it was merely one more thing that made it glaringly obvious that the only virtue she had to offer was her beauty. True, with her diluted Veela blood, her beauty was fantastic, more of an aphrodisiac than anything he'd experienced before. However, after awhile, the aphrodisiac became less potent, and Ron began noticing that Fleur was less perfect than the average person he saw walking down the street.
He found it mildly amusing that the gossip rags hadn't played up his proposal to Fleur more. He'd been incredibly smashed the night he'd suggested it, and she'd taken the opportunity to make a scene. She laughed in his face, said she was tired of playing around with a nothing when she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. The next day he hadn't remembered much other than her making a scene, but it all came back to him when he read Lavender's column.
He'd watched Fleur read the papers day after day, her perfect face skimming the articles, looking for her own name. She was a shameless publicity hound, and wasn't above doing something outrageous just to see her name in print. It was immensely amusing to see her face as she read about the unidentified French woman to whom Ron Weasley had proposed. She'd slapped him, and he'd know the relationship would be over within a month. In retrospect, if he had wanted the relationship to be anything more than a dalliance, he shouldn't have laughed quite so hard.
So here he sat, passing time with a woman who was nothing more than an annoyance to him. She was boring, ignorant, and he thought he might be using glamour spells to cover the tiny imperfections that every woman had. The lack of imperfection in her physical appearance only highlighted her character flaws. Perhaps he'd just end it now, blandly, calmly in this little café on the Avignon sidewalk. There was only one problem. He wasn't in the mood for a scene, and he hadn't been listening to what she'd said for the last five minutes.
"Vee could go to New York or zomsing. Malkin's is 'aving a preview for her spring line in a few weeks and..."
"I don't think this is working," he replied abruptly. "I'm going to Ginny's thing. You can tool about in New York if you like, but you'll have to do it on your own."
"Ronald, I'm not going to New York alone. You'll come or I'll bring Claude along. I'll have a tumultuous affair with him and you'll be horribly jealous and lonely. Zen, you'll come crawling back to me." She used her sexy-warning glance that she'd spent years perfecting.
"Have an affair with him if you like. This has been boring for months, and I'm going to end it before it gets worse."
Her eyes flashed and she stood, throwing her glass of chablis in his face. "You will regret zis Ronald!"
She swung her hair over her shoulder and began to march out before Ron grabbed her wrist. "Fleur, one more thing. Claude's gay. He grabbed my ass last week."
Fleur wrenched her arm from him and left the restaurant in a rage. Ron pulled out a quill out of his satchel and began to write a response to Ginny's invitation.
"Gin, I'll be there. I ditched the blond and I'll be having the chicken, of course. Don't you read the papers? Everyone's afraid of the mad cow thing still. I heard from this Parisian that some beef-tips liquified his cousins intestines or something."
Pansy Parkinson looked down at the invitation in her hand. She knew she'd only been invited because her family was ridiculously prominent. She wasn't stupid enough to mistake a gesture of social obligation for a genuine interest in her company. She also knew that her the rumors of her involvement with the Death Eaters, of her dabbling in the Dark Arts. The rumors about her negated her responsibility to attend.
Truth be told, she'd never dabbled in anything in her life. Pansy didn't do things half-assed.
She flipped the little parchment in her hand, to the RSVP side and began writing. She would have the chicken, Jet would have the beef.
After all, just because she didn't have to go, didn't mean she wasn't going to.