Chapter 2
If We Ever Meet Again

December 13th 2001

Dean

"Oi, Seamus!" Dean yelled, tossing a pillow at the sleeping boy on the couch. "We're late!"

Seamus made a muffled sound into his pillow and promptly pulled the blankets back over his head. Dean rolled his eyes as he swung his legs over the edge of his couch and headed over to the window and drew the curtains.

The light seeped into every corner of the room, making Dean shield his eyes and Seamus mumble something which included some very colourful swear words.

Stepping over discarded clothes on the floor from when the two of them couldn't be bothered to tidy up, he walked over to the kitchen and began preparing breakfast. "Get up, Seamus. You'll be late for work for the millionth time." Dean said, turning back around to face the tiny living room where the two of them slept and flicking is wand at Seamus' doona which rose off him immediately and folded itself in the corner.

"Fuck off." Seamus said, turning over and burying his head back in his pillow. Dean shook his head and pulled two dirty plates out of the sink and vanishing the old food in them with his wand. Neither of the two boys could be bothered to wash up the dishes every night after dinner as both of them were incredibly lazy and after work, both of them were completely exhausted and had a lot of paper work to do. Things like doing the dishes and cleaning up the apartment just didn't happen.

Dean looked around the tiny one roomed apartment. It had been all that he and Seamus could afford when they'd decided to room together after they'd finished Hogwarts and got jobs at the ministry. Dean often wondered why they didn't buy a bigger one now that they both had more money, but they were happy here nonetheless.

They lived in a small neighbourhood in Chiswick, London. To their knowledge they were one of only three magical households which made levitating the groceries up the stairs a little harder than it should've been. In fact, they had resigned themselves to carrying them up the many stairs the muggle way.

The toast popped out of the toaster and Dean flicked his wand at it so that it soared across the kitchen, landed on the two plates and immediately started to butter themselves.

There was a tapping on the window and Dean looked up to see one of the ministry owls that delivered the Daily Prophet that morning. He felt a rush of hot June air hit his face as he pushed it open and the owl flew inside, swooping across the room to drop the paper on Seamus' head and fluttered back into the kitchen and sticking it's leg out for Dean to put a knut in it.

"Hang on," Dean said, hurrying to the door to get his money pouch out of his bag. The owl clicked its beak impatiently, no doubt that it had other Daily Prophets to deliver. "I'm coming, I'm coming." Dean said, wincing as the paper hit him in the back of the head as he passed Seamus' couch as he tried to extract a knut from all of his sickles.

"There you go." Dean said to the owl, placing the knut into its pouch. Finally satisfied, the owl flew back out of the window without so much as a hoot of thanks.

"Breakfast," Dean said, plonking the toast down in front of Seamus who still hadn't moved from his sleeping position, despite the fact that he had no blanket any more.

"Thanks." Seamus muttered as Dean retrieved the Daily Prophet and sat down to read it with his breakfast.

He glanced over the headlines briefly, nothing catching his attention before thumbing through the paper, occasionally reading an article that Rita Skeeter had so clearly messed with. It made him laugh a little as what she had written was so much more eccentric than the event probably was.

Downing his tea, Dean waved his wand at his plate and mug and directed it at the sink where it joined the stack of dirty dishes that they probably should try to wash up sometime soon.

"Seamus if you don't get up and eat your breakfast within the next minute you will be late." Dean said, picking some clothes up off the floor and heading into the bathroom. Seamus grunted in response.

Seamus would probably sleep all day if Dean wasn't there to wake him up each morning. Dean splashed cold water on his face and slipped into some jeans and a t-shirt. Being an auror, he had no idea whether or not there would be a case that day or not and he had learned quickly that nobody wore their suits to work unless they knew that there was a case. Dean's suit lived in his locker, as did everyone else's suits in the auror department. They would all quickly don them if word came around about a break in at Diagon alley, a fight between a wizard and a muggle, where they might have to wipe some memories, or on the rarest occasion, the dementors at Azkaban going wild and sucking the souls out of everyone in the prison. Being an auror was most certainly not a boring job, but the paperwork was horrendous!

"I hate work." Seamus yawned as Dean walked out of the bathroom, "Why couldn't they give me a decent job at The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?"

"Seamus," Dean said, looking disbelievingly at his friend, "You applied for a job at the Department of Experimental Charms… what job were they supposed to give you other than the one you applied for?"

"Well, I thought it would be more experimenting with charms, but no we help people who experiment with charms and reverse the effects, not quite the ideal job that I imagined." Seamus grumbled and Dean glanced furtively at the clock.

"I'm late, so I'm going to go now." Dean said, plucking his keys off the table by the door, opening it and stepping out into the corridor, "Don't take too long or I'll get a full on Spanish inquisition at work as to where you are."

"Spanish inquisition?" Seamus asked.

"Muggle history," Dean said, rolling his eyes, "you know it wouldn't hurt you to open a book once in a while."

"Books are boring." Seamus said.

"With that attitude you will get nowhere." Dean called as he shut the door behind him, shaking his head at Seamus' antics. He knew that Seamus would eventually get up and make his way to work in his own sweet time. It didn't really matter for him as, judging by the times that Dean had been down there; the members of that department only got a call once a week and spent most of their time flying paper planes at each other to stave off the boredom.

He quickened his pace down the stairs of the building, waving at old Mrs Cribbins as she walked up the stairs. Mrs Cribbins was one of the other witches in the area, meaning the wink that she gave him as he passed her was one that was slightly reprimanding for being late for auror duty.

Dean wished that when he and Seamus had decided to rent the flat that they had noticed that it didn't have a fireplace, meaning that Dean had to walk down the road to a deserted alleyway which the Ministry had declared the apparition safe point for Chiswick.

Seamus thought it was ridiculous that they were given no legitimate reason why they weren't allowed to disapparated from their own homes, but secretly Dean thought that the ministry was heading in somewhat the right direction.

With apparition safe points, people could only apparate in or out of the place that they were going to or leaving through a single point in the suburb. Granted, it wasn't the most fool proof situation, it was riddled with disadvantages and dangers, not to mention that it was a complete inconvenience for everyone in the neighbourhood who needed to use it, but nobody complained, because after the war if the ministry was taking extra precautions to protect people, nobody was going to argue, especially now that Kingsley Shacklebolt was the Minister of Magic.

Dean reached the alleyway and hurried down it until he reached a piece of corrugated iron, which marked the start of the zone where he could apparate to the ministry (the best part about working for the auror office was the fact that he was granted immediate apparition, which meant that Dean didn't have to suffer through the tedious security protocols that the ministry had set up after the war.

Turning on the spot, Dean focussed on the chair behind his desk in the auror office where he could sit back and relax until someone called him on a case. Well, everyone else could relax, he was given all of the paperwork until the next batch of amateurs came in and Dean could pass over the work to them.

In the years following the war there had been a rush of people wanting to become aurors, so the ministry had decided to take double the amount of participants, but only every three years which lead to nobody wanting to wait another three years to go into auror training, leaving them with no new aurors.

Dean appeared in his office seconds later and sat down at his chair, pulling out the file that he had been organising the previous day.

"Thomas!"

Dean looked up, surprised to see his supervisor and head of the auror office, Nicholas Darzky, walking towards him. He had never spoken to Mr Darzky before, not even when he'd been in the auror training facility.

"Yes, sir?" Dean said, abandoning the file and looking up at his superior.

"No paperwork today Thomas, we've had a muggle break into Diagon Alley with a couple of friends and rob the apothecary. There'll be a few memory charms dished out I daresay. We need you to invent a cover story and hand them over to the muggle police."

"I can do that, sir." Dean said, quickly packing up the file and stowing back into his draw, grateful to be allowed to get away from his desk.

"Good to hear, Thomas. But please get changed beforehand, we can't have aurors on the streets in jeans and a t-shirt. People might not recognise you."

"Yes sir, of course sir." Dean said politely watching Darzky go. He immediately rushed off to his locker and pulled out the suit that had been in there gathering dust since his third week at work when he'd finally caught on that he didn't have to wear one.

"Dean Thomas?"

Dean wheeled around to see two aurors who had been in the training facility with them. He couldn't quite remember their names but both of them had a bad reputation for being tough.

"That's me." Dean said, smiling at them. They just looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

"I'm Franklin Aurelius and this is Yves Mondine, we're going to be accompanying you on this." The slightly larger one said.

"Great," Dean said, "I'll just go and change into this and I'll be right with you."

"Hurry up." Yves Mondine said.

Turning away, Dean sighed. This was going to be a long day.

Parvati

Parvati surveyed herself in the bathroom mirror.

The purple bruises decorated her body from where Theodore had used her as a punching bag.

Cuts from six months ago were forced open again and again and slowly oozed blood from them.

She touched a bruise on her shoulder and rubbed some cream on it. Cream was all that she had left. Theodore had taken her wand on the first day that she had moved in with him.

She hadn't seen her family in half a year, she hadn't left the house without Theodore by her side and she most certainly didn't have a job anymore.

She sometimes wondered how she had gone from a successful business woman at the Department of Foreign Affairs to being a slave in her own household. Oh yeah. She reminded herself bitterly, stupid marriage laws.

On the rare occasion that she managed to scrounge a paper from the rubbish bin and read it she saw more and more pure bloods being forced into marrying each other. She saw girls her age and younger being forced into cars after their weddings in the pictures. Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini were forced together, Rose Zeller and Dennis Creevy were assigned to each other, Susan Bones and Ernie McMillan, Ron Weasley point blank refused to marry Astoria Greengrass to the point where several supervisors were injured, so their first Borns were promised to each other. Each time she opened the Daily Prophet she saw more and more people being added to the list of forced marriages.

At least some of them were good matches. Susan and Ernie had been dating for years before this law was introduced so their marriage would've just come a little sooner that they had anticipated.

"Oi, Parvati, get me another beer! And make sure it's cold this time, bitch!" she heard Theodore call from the kitchen. She sighed as she pulled her dressing gown towards her and wrapped it around herself. That's all Theodore did, drink, yell at her, beat her and rape her. Parvati didn't know whether or not it was classed as rape anymore if she consented to it.

"Hurry up you bloody whore! I'm not going to live forever." Theodore demanded and she heard his fist come down hard on the table. She hurried out of the bathroom and headed towards the fridge. She knew there were cold beers in there as she had restocked it last night.

"You took your bloody time! You're going to be the death of me you stupid woman." Theodore said as Parvati used a bottle opener to pop the bottle open.

"Aren't you going to apologise?" Theodore asked, Parvati didn't make a noise. Theodore sighed exasperatedly, "Stupid bitch, you need to learn some manners. Now give me my beer."

Filled with hot rage, Parvati made it look like she was having trouble opening the bottle, spat into it and preceded to hand it to Theodore who took a long sip from it.

Brimming with satisfaction, Parvati forced a smile off her face as Theodore chugged down the whole beer. She didn't know what he saw in the muggle beverage; maybe it kept him smashed for longer? Maybe it was just cheaper. Parvati had no clue; she'd learnt not to oppose him or she'd get a beating.

"Cover up your damn bruises woman, we're going into Diagon Alley today for some stupid 'six months on' shit for the fuckin' Daily Prophet." Theodore said. Slamming the bottle down on the table he pointed a shaking finger at her, "If you say a single word about our 'activities' I'll lock you in the fuckin' cellar when we get back and you won't be fed for a week."

Parvati nodded slowly, hoping that he could feel the cold hate from her eyes boring into his soul and freezing his black heart.

"Well then, hurry up! We're going in ten minutes and I don't want a single sign of those bruises." He reminded as Parvati walked slowly away back into the bedroom with only one thought in her mind; running away from this horrible life that she now lead.

Smiling for the cameras wasn't easy. Not when Parvati was in so much pain on the inside. She hated lying to the Daily Prophet and saying that she loved being married to Theodore. She hated his arm around her shoulders as the cameras took their pictures. She hated everything about him, every single hair on his head.

The cameras were never ending and her chance to slip away was becoming slimmer until Rita Skeeter called Theodore away for a private interview. Parvati saw her chance.

Making sure that people weren't looking at her, she quietly slipped behind a bookshelf. It was a perfect escape route to the back door of the shop… if the counter wasn't in the way.

"Hey, Parvati!" she heard a familiar cheery voice say. She wheeled around to see none other than Dean Thomas walking towards her, beaming his head off.

"Dean!" Parvati whispered, "Oh boy am I glad to see you again."

"How are you?" Dean asked, moving to hug her. Parvati winced as he brushed against her bruises. "You alright?" he asked, noticing the way that she cringed away from him.

Parvati shot a furtive glance at Rita Skeeter, making sure that she still had Theodore occupied.

"What's wrong?" Dean asked, his brow creasing. Parvati bit her lip, she had to tell someone, but how would she do that without Theodore knowing, because he always knew.

"I hate him." Parvati said, coming to a conclusion about how to say it.

"I don't say I blame you." Dean said darkly, glaring in Theodore's direction. "What's it like?"

"Horrible," Parvati said, shooting another glance at Theodore to make sure that he wasn't looking at her, "I wish I could just run away."

"Oi, Thomas! You're supposed to be on duty, not chatting up girls!" Parvati heard someone yell from outside. Dean looked torn between his colleagues and staying and talking to Parvati.

Dean pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbled something on it.

"Here," he said, handing it to her, "This is my address, floo me some time and we can talk properly. I really should be helping out with the break in at the apothecary but I saw you come in here and couldn't resist coming to talk to you."

Parvati slipped the paper up her sleeve, "Thank you." Parvati said. "It's been ages since I've had human interaction."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing." Parvati said, shaking her head. She'd already said too much.

"Thomas, come on, are you an auror or a prostitute, we're on duty here!"

"I'm coming Aurelius!" Dean said, turning away from Parvati and walking out of the store.

"I'll talk to you soon, okay." Dean said, just as he reached the top step, "Just call me if you need to have someone to talk to." And with a nod, he was gone

"Thank you Dean," She muttered. Just like that she started to feel like there might be some sort of light in the dark path that she was being forced down.

AN: Well the bi-weekly updates were a fail weren't they?

I would like to thank Laux14 and Alarice Tey for getting this back on track with the ' Multichapter Forced Marriage Competition' and the 'Almost Like a Novel Multichapter story challenge'

This has also been entered in a few other competitions, which probably means that once Light of Day is finished, this will become priority. Yay!

I'm very sorry for the four month wait and I hope that you'll forgive me and keep on reading :)

I would absolutely love it if you could leave me some feedback in a review.

Until Next Time

~The Original Horcrux~