It's a new day. I'm helping mother answer some of her letters to do with her business in her home office. The Parkinson's have many and she frequently uses one. The business isn't registered under her name, it's unheard of for socialite wealthy pureblood wives to work, but mother has the sharpest eye for business and an undying love for it. She does the work behind the scenes and father lets her because he knows how much it'll kill her to not do it, but he lets her do it under his name so she can maintain the picture perfect image to the outside world. Pureblood and high aristocratic wizarding politics is tough like that.

"Pansy...I was thinking...with the...unpolitical end to the war, and the fact that many pureblood families were wiped out entirely by the callous and violent actions of He-Who-Must-Not-be-Named, and the instability there is to a lot of the wealthy old families of the wizarding world...isn't it time to pull the strings in marriage, and try to get engaged with a suitable bachelor? The wizarding circles want to see stability among the old wizarding pureblood families after the war, and what could be better than a marriage...it could give you other benefits..." mother said.

I bit my lip and tried not to let the tortured look on my face show too much, as I stared of in the distance and attempted to sort through my feelings with it.

Being raised as an aristocratic family it was expected that I marry the right person from the right social circles. The sooner after graduation from Hogwarts the better. And there were many events in pureblood aristocratic circles to make it easier for the right people to meet, the right fortunes to combine, the right class everyone thinks we ought to have happen.

When I was young I used to dream of being a princess, or the closest thing to a princess, waltzing into the ball and dating my dream pureblood wealthy Mr Right. Of having all the little girl's envy but yet...

It was Hogwarts. I was Pansy Parkinson. Daughter of one of the most well-known pureblood families. I had a few friends before I began Hogwarts and they all knew of my family's incredible wealth, my father's business skills, the potential of my acquaintance, but yet also the danger of pissing me of. I was admired, respected, feared, loved, but most of all - respected. I already entered Hogwarts with a bit of a name for myself, and for my careful balancing of all the expectations and the different ways people treated me before I arrived at Hogwarts. Intense expectations were put on me. I read people, analysed them, countered them, and played all my cards right to still be much respected and admired after. I had done my bit, even though it was one of the things I hated the most in life. Dealing with other people this way I mean. Why must it be so exhausting?

Why couldn't I just...succeed, put my mind to something, a goal, and do well in it, like any other family. Why did I also have to deal with people treating me differently because of my family name and history, of having to walk that tightrope, of having to balance all of it well...

I tried. I really did. I sucked up to Draco Malfoy because I believed he was everything. The number one boy at Hogwarts was him. His family were incredibly wealthy, the only family that was wealthier than ours. His father was a well respected businessman who managed the accounts well, his name commanded respect, and every Slytherin and almost everyone in our grade at Hogwarts fancied him. He was the boy whom most girls believed would be the perfect husband, Mr Right, the one to make all their bad days go away and give them a reality of happiness and pure right in terms of the way we lived life, that every girl wanted him.

To date him was to earn the envy, admiration, respect, and even a little bit of fear of all the girls.

I tried. I really did. I sucked up to him. Ever since our first year, all the way through fourth. I constantly followed him around, after Crabbe and Goyle, even ditching some of my friends in the Slytherin girl's dormitory to do so. I listened to his jokes when he made them, his comments, his remarks, in class and I finished them for him if I felt he didn't fully say all he could've, I would explain misunderstandings to the other classmates, I would add more detail if I felt he was undertalking himself, I would always back him up in almost everything (unless it was really stupid, but he was Draco Malfoy - just as cold and calculating as his father in many ways, and definitely not stupid), I would swoon over him given almost every chance, always with a compliment...

He never gave me any indication he disliked me, Draco.

He never has.

I've never seen him dislike anyone. Except for Potter and Weasley, both of whom he hates with a passion. But otherwise, he's cool as the surface of a very deep lake at school. You wouldn't know what went on inside his mind, his emotions. I've never seen him dislike anyone much in the Slytherin or outside. It's like only Potter and a few Gryffindors can even rouse him to such emotion.

He never gave me any indication he didn't want me around. He never gave me any indication he didn't want me.

And so I kept chasing him. Even though I didn't feel he loved me.

In fourth grade we dated briefly. It was the year of the Triwizard Tournament, there was a Yule Ball. I had gotten so close to him that I was the only girl he'd considered asking. He asked me to go. But first, he asked me to be his girlfriend first. As if we had to be in a relationship before we went together. As if he didn't want to cheapen it to just a cheap fling at a date, and so he insisted on a relationship first. I was ecstatic. Over the moon.

We dated for two weeks before the Yule Ball.

Broke up the second week after. In total three weeks and two days of the fourth.

I cried when he broke up with me.

But I couldn't let anyone see it.

I cried when we were dating.

He was just so...cold. Like he wasn't really there all the time.

I cried for months after we broke up because I felt like he still hadn't rejected me almost, and he still didn't give any indication he disliked me. During fifth year and sixth I tried to get close to him again, resume our roles. But there was a distance there that wasn't before.

Then, there was the war. To which Draco was a deatheater and became involved in it. Mother and I had a discussion about it. So of course, there was that. But even now, when it was all over, and we had graduated Hogwarts last year, there was still a bitterness and hurt to Draco Malfoy that had only grown since fourth year.

His reason for breaking up with me felt so light and silly at the time, I didn't feel it was a real rejection. He had never seemed to hate me or avoid me after. Just didn't want to be in an official relationship. And so I kept hoping.

I still remember the bitter pangs of fifth to seventh year. Just hoping.

Even though I still hoped to date and marry Draco Malfoy, like a childhood dream that never fully died. I could not forget the unhappiness I felt over him. I did not know if I wanted to put myself through that pain again, to deal with Draco again, now that we were in adulthood and the pressure to get married was ramping up again.

"I don't know mother..." I said, "I don't know if I'm ready to date so soon after the war."

"Nonsense Pansy. The old pureblood balls and events are starting again. A lot of elderly folks are getting excited over the prospect of stable and successful marriages forming. You're all rebuilding from the aftermath of the wall together so you're all in the same boat. There's no awkwardness at these events. Besides, Draco Malfoy even asked you to be his partner for the first ball held at his house," responded my mother.

My head snapped up. Draco? Malfoy?

It wasn't that I wanted to go through pain again. It was that I didn't want to walk away with regret. Regret at not giving it - him - a chance when it could've worked out. Regret that some part of me still loved Draco Malfoy, or did not fully feel rejected by him, regret that I may have walked away from this stage of my life still with dreams of Draco, and not known the answer to it. Not given a try at a relationship all that I had.

It wasn't that I loved him, or that I wasn't hurt by him. It was that I didn't want to walk away with bitter feelings of regret.

"Alright mother, I'll give things a go," I said.

And that was how I sealed my fate.