The Heiress of Slytherin

Fate is a Fickle Friend

Looking at Ivy, they shared an understanding nod and smile. With a flourish, she turned to the group. "I have an announcement everyone. Salazar forbidding something goes wrong..." she paused for dramatic effect, "Theo is going to live with me!"

There was complete silence for over a minute, then everyone erupted at once.

Ivy watched her friends descend into chaos with raised eyebrows and a smile playing on her lips. Blaise was sitting on the floor in front of the fire with his legs outstretched and his arm casually thrown around Theo's shoulders, who was sitting cross-legged next to them. Both of them were also fighting off wide grins as Pansy, Draco and Selina rushed over each other with exclamations and questions, all too jumbled to understand a word of them.

After a few minutes of this, they began to calm down enough that Ivy could raise her voice and restore order. "You lot sound absolutely mental, you'll give me a headache. If you ask me your questions one at a time, then I'll try to answer."

Selina managed to get in hers first, making Pansy and Draco groan in frustration. "By live with you, do you mean like, all the time? Permanently?" Ivy grinned and nodded.

"He'll live with me as long as he wants, and probably longer when I force him." From the corner of her eye, she saw Theo flush and smile happily.

Much to Draco's increasing dismay, it was now Pansy that beat him in asking her question. "Can we visit? All the bloody time?" She said it fervently but there was something underlying in her tone that made Ivy pause. Pansy had an awful home life too; she knew her friend was happy for Theo, but that didn't mean it wasn't hurting slightly.

Not wanting to alert anyone to what she suspected her friend's internal conflict was, she smiled again and nodded. "If you don't come to stay with us for at least a month, I'll feed you to the grindylows in my moat. I'm sure my parents can talk to yours about logistics, and it will look especially appealing to your parents with the prince of the purebloods living there." Pansy snorted with laughter as Theo flipped Ivy off. Draco frowned.

"I thought we agreed that I was the pureblood royalty here." His tone rang with jealousy and Theo smirked, flicking his eyes between him and Ivy. When Draco caught him doing that, he narrowed his eyes and obviously moved them between Blaise and Theo, as if to say "you're one to talk."

Theo grinned and raised his hands in surrender, before moving himself back deeper into Blaise's side. Trying to distract from their exchange, in which he felt oddly as though he'd lost, Draco cleared his throat and continued. "Also, I don't think grindylows eat people."

"Firstly: pureblood isn't an actual thing, so nobody is royalty. For the sake of the argument, however, let's just settle it by agreeing that all pureblood mothers have an equally unhealthy obsession with both of you, fair?" Draco smirked a little. He had come a long way that year with deconstructing his beliefs around what being a pureblood meant and was, but Ivy was secretly worried about him going back for summer. She knew that him changing those beliefs was a good thing, but she didn't think his father would be too pleased.

Pushing aside the unpleasant thought to figure out another time, Ivy winked at him, "as for the grindylows, mine do." She nodded solemnly at him when he squinted suspiciously at her, but Pansy ruined the whole thing by laughing.

"Mate, I'm sorry, but you don't even have a moat," Ivy grumbled and threw a pillow at her, which only made her laugh harder.

"I wouldn't have told you about the place if I knew you'd hold it above my head, you traitor." Pansy was howling with laughter at this point, and even Ivy couldn't keep the smile off her face.

Draco smirked smugly and gave Ivy a distinctly "I knew it" look. She rolled her eyes. "Yeah yeah, you believed me at first. Anyways what were your actual questions, cause the last two were rubbish."