Postscript

Harry Potter is a bastard.

Not literally, of course—god, the scandal—but he’s messy and he’s handsome and he’s sarcastic and he’s rude, really, unfailingly kind to the people who don’t matter and inexplicably hostile to the ones who do. He looks at Pansy like she’s an annoyance, at best, and a villain, at worst, and his distaste for her, for what she is and who she is and how she fits into the microscopically tiny mold of the world they’re forced to share—it makes her feel transparent. See-through, but not quite fortunate enough to be invisible.

It happens like this.

[ ALTERNATIVELY - Pansy is getting married for all the wrong reasons, and then she meets Harry. ]