DISCLAIMER: characters belong to the amazingly creative J. K. Rowling

A/n: this story was posted before but there was a glitch in the formatting so I had to re-upload it… Nothing has changed in case you were wondering! :D

He doesn't think he'll ever find someone like her again. He's looked everywhere, everyfuckingwhere but she's nowhere to be found. He looks under rocks and on trees and once he used a telescope to look at the moon and stars, wondering if maybe he can find her there. He doesn't.

They tell him to move on because hasn't he heard? Break-ups are normal and he isn't the fucking king of England. He scoffs, he knows who the king of England is and he's convinced that if he were slimy old Prince Charles he'd have found her in onefuckingminute. Royalty is like honey to flies, isn't it?

He burns her photographs. He burns her letters to him. He teaches his owl not to accept letters from girls who look like her. It's hard, but he eventually manages to, and it involves owl treats and old pop songs (for him, not the owl) and at least twelve pictures of her because he does not want the damn bird to get confused. Not that she'll ever send him letters again, but just in case, and it's easier to get over somebody by pretending it was you who decided to end it all.

He avoids talking about her. His friends aren't friends with her anyway, so that's not a problem. But Pansy is a curious and nosy bitch and won't stop asking him about her. She wants to know when the last time he had sex was and whether he's heard from her, and she's betting he will never see her again. He tells Pansy to fuck off.

One day he runs into HarryfuckingPotter on the streets near Diagon Alley, in Muggle London. He is looking for paint to paint his walls with, and HarryfuckingPotter is out doing whatever the fuck it is heroes of the world do. He ignores the black-haired man and keeps walking when he sees scar-head turn around to stare at him. He ignores him when he hears Malfoy as a sort of acknowledgement or salutation. But he cannot help but tense up when HarryfuckingPotter says She misses you, you fucking dickhead.

He meets Astoria Greengrass at a pub near his home. He knows she's been hanging there for the past three weeks in hopes of running into him. She is pathetic, but pathetic women are easier to fuck. So they do. It lasts longer than usual because he just won't come but it doesn't bother her because, hell, he is inside her, and that's all she wants. And when they're done she bats her eyelashes and thanks him and tells him she's been wanting to do that for a long time, and he just smirks and kicks her out. Low-key kicks her out. She's too pathetic to know she's being sent away.

The papers are obsessed with him, and they chronicle everything, from his shopping habits to his fuck-routines with Astoria Greengrass. He knows she's behind this, because it's good publicity for a Greengrass, so low in status, to be sleeping with a Malfoy, but the fucks he gives are so minimal, he can't even count them. All she needs now is a marriage proposal.

Despite having taught his fucking owl not to take letters from her, he comes into his flat one day to find one from her waiting on the table. His heart skips a beat but he wonders whether that is from her having written him or the fact that he just walked up six flights of stairs. Either way, he reads her letter. It contains words like fuck you and motherfucker and I hope you rot in hell but he can read between the lines; she misses him. That, and she wants to murder Astoria Greengrass. He laughs for the first time in weeks.

He writes her a response even though his conscience is screaming at him to not fucking do it. He says he's glad she's doing well. He says hell is a good place to rot in because he knows the Devil personally. He says he'll give Astoria her best wishes.

He gets another letter from her the very next day. He's not angry at his owl for bringing over her letters anymore because it's just a bird and besides, it was childish of him to even train the owl not to do its job.

Her letter contains only five words: Don't you dare marry her.

Two days later the flamboyant cover of Witch Weekly is him and Astoria Greengrass locked in a John-and-Yoko-style embrace. He'd insisted on a picture like that because he knows she hates cliché shit and loves John Lennon but hates Yoko Ono. Also, AstoriafuckingGreengrass didn't care much, and the only person who found it uncomfortable was the photographer for Witch Weekly. The title reads: Wedding of the Highest Class: Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass.

She also hates rhymes.

He sends her a wedding invitation just to piss her off. A week later he receives an RSVP from her. It says: Hermione Granger has cordially accepted the invitation and will be attending the Malfoy- Greengrass wedding on the 25th of April with her plus- one, Mr. Fred Weasley.

Astoria Greengrass comes home an hour later to a broken vase and a cream- colored piece of paper burnt and shriveled in the fireplace. Her fiancé is quiet all evening and rough during sex.

It's three days before his wedding and it's a typical grey British day. The clouds are heavy with rain and he hears thunder in the distance. Indeed, he mistakes the harsh rat-tat-tat-tat on the door for thunder, and when he goes to open it he swears he sees lightning strike.

I hate you, she says as soon as he sees her.

Likewise, he replies, smirking.

She slaps him across the face and leaves, and he feels the sting on his left cheek for hours.

His wedding day is here but the ceremony has been postponed because of him. Well, him and Fred Weasley to be exact. He remembers seeing the red-haired fucktruck sliding his hand all over her ass and sucking her face on his wedding day and something inside him snaps. He remembers going up to them calmly, remembers her eyes widening and immediately narrowing again, and he remembers the sound of FredfuckingWeasley's nose breaking beneath his fist. He remembers her scream of shock but also the subtle glimmer of something akin to admiration in her eyes. After that everything else is foggy. He ends up nursing a black eye and a wobbly tooth in the back room of the ceremony room or whatever it's called, and smirking because FredfuckingWeasley has a concussion, according to Blaise Zabini.

You could have killed him, she shouts, coming into the room.

He only laughs.

She waits a few moments, breathing heavily. Then she asks him quietly, Do you hate me?

The answer is a double-edged sword, Granger, he replies, gingerly feeling his swollen eye. Because it is. It really fucking is. If he hates her, it means he attacked FredfuckingWeasley because he wants to make her miserable. If he doesn't, well. And both are answers are just as shitty.

She stares at him, not knowing what to say.

Do you love me? He asks this, not her, because he is curious, and he's looked everywhere, everyfuckingwhere, for someone like her, but he's now realized that unless she says yes, he doesn't need to keep looking anymore. He thinks he'd given up back when he'd first fucked Astoria Greengrass, but now he knows that all he needs is an answer from her, something he didn't have last time, and then he can officially give up. Because he didn't have an answer last time, not even a question, really, and that's the reason why they're here, now, in the back room while his wedding ceremony is being postponed and FredfuckingWeasley has a concussion.

She keeps staring at him. Then something swells in both their chests and he doesn't even need to hear anything from her.

AstoriafuckingGreengrass is too pathetic to know that her fiancé ran off with another woman and too pathetic to see that he, the gentleman he is, even left her a nice note explaining everything. She spots Blaise Zabini drinking alone in the ceremony room and makes her way up to him.

A/n: story was inspired by theyellowumbrella's world has taught me angst when i deserved joy.