SIDE B: TRACK 10

[Lavender Brown x Cormac McLaggen]

Turn your heartache right into joy
Cause she's a girl and you're a boy
Get it together come on make it nice
You ain't gonna need any more advice

Love The One You're With / Stephen Stills [1970]

Lavender hoped her dress hadn't become scrunched by the way she had pressed her back into the crumbling wall behind her. She was sure that the witch sitting on a shaded bench a few yards away, Hermione Granger, would have performed the spell to refreshen chiffon with ease, but Lavender had never got the hang of it. There were a million things that Lavender wanted to master but hadn't been able to, and a million more that Hermione had bested her in. To add insult to injury, most of them were beneath the other witch's notice.

Lavender's grip on her inexpensive champagne flute, holding inexpensive fizz, tightened as the couple in front of her unconsciously drifted closer together. Ron Weasley moved his knees ever so slightly towards Hermione's, and his fingers tentatively landed on the full skirt of the other girls dress.

They seemed drawn together, Ron and Hermione, like magnets, like they always did. Lavender had even heard some faint cooing over the couple from passing professors. It made her want to vomit or scream. She couldn't work out which would make her feel the most improved.

Lavender had moved away from the others hoping to escape. She wanted some reprieve from the nightmare of being around a happy mass of people sharing what they were planning to do with their lives. Instead, she had run into the two people she had least wanted to see, at least together.

Graduation was supposed to be her thing. Lavender had survived the year under the cripplingly, barbaric rule of the Carrows, had survived Greyback's savagery and after painful months of recovery, she had come back to Hogwarts and got passable exam results. This party was going to be her reentry into the world after she had been forced to shy away from it. Lavender had planned an entire look and on the day had pulled it off with perfection. Looking at the two people in front of her Lavender wasn't sure why she had bothered.

Ron leaned forward and brushed one of his calloused thumbs - thumbs Lavender could remember the feel of - across Hermione's cheek. Lavender drained the last of her glass, instantly regretting that she was now standing outside of the radius of the bored looking servers. They were currently contained on the distant courtyard wafting amongst the happy students.

Ron smiled, a little quirk on the side of his mouth, it must have been a reaction to something Hermione said, but Lavender was too far away to hear it. She couldn't decide if she wanted to listen to all of their conversations, or never hear them speak again. Ron moved back, splaying his hand wider on Hermione's lap and Lavender forced herself to look away. She might not have been as proficient as the witch yards away from her, but she could still throw a hex as good as anyone. No matter if it was deserved or not.

Lavender had been in love with Ronald Billius Weasley since their third year. Well, maybe not in love, but she had noticed him then as more than just one of the boys that took up space in the Gryffindor common room. Ron seemed to get taller every year, but that was the first time Lavender could remember it having such a transformative effect on his body. They had happened to be heading out of the common room at the same time one morning, and Ron had held the door open for her to walk through. Lavender had looked up at him as she ducked under his outstretched arm and even though it was such a small thing, it made her feel noticed, and dainty. She had also had the distinct impression that as she sashayed down the corridor ahead of him, Ron had been watching her. It was a wonderful feeling, and that first taste had made her crave more.

Really though, it was during their fifth year when she knew that she loved him. However, it was also the year that Lavender realised that at least part of Ron's continued - off and on - interest in her, was because it made Hermione jealous.

Lavender looked back over at the shaded spot and forced herself to face the reality of her situation. Hermione's head was now resting on Ron's shoulder, and his fingers were playing with the ends of Hermione's ridiculous hair. Even from a distance, Lavender could see how careful Ron's touches were, how special. He had never been gentle with her. In all of the instances where they explored the more physical side to their attraction, there had been no touches that could have been mistaken for worship. Nothing like the look that was currently on Ron's face as he regarded Hermione. It was as if he couldn't believe his luck. Lavender certainly could not believe hers.

Sure, when Lavender had taken off her shirt for the first time - when they had found an abandoned broom cupboard they were sure no one would find them in - there had been wonder and a little awe in Ron's face. At the time Lavender had read too much into it. With the gift of experience, hindsight revealed Ron's zeal was only a representation of how any teenage boy would react upon getting their first real sight of body parts that up until that moment had been the reserve of fantasy.

Lavender pulled a compact out of the side of her skirt and glanced at herself impassively in the tiny mirror. At least her hair was still perfect. Her soft blonde waves fell artfully down her back, with one side held up by a beautiful, and utterly fashionable slide. And yet, all of that perfection hadn't mattered.

Lavender had been waiting for Graduation since she had returned to Hogwarts. She had thought of it as her big chance. Granger had come back to school, but the boys hadn't. Lavender had known they would come back for the remaining member of their little gang graduating, and she was going to show Ron everything he had been missing.

Lavender had walked across the stage in slow, measured steps and looked around with a winning smile that she knew made the best of her features just as the scroll was pushed into her hands. But Ron hadn't been looking. He was watching something over her shoulder attentively as he carried on conversations with the small cluster of guests around him. Really Lavender had known what she would be confronted with when she followed his gaze, and yet when she turned and saw Hermione looking windswept and freckled standing in line, bouncing impatiently, she still felt the stab of rejection as hard as if it had been a complete surprise.

She hated her. She hated him. She hated herself.

Just as Lavender began to debate throwing herself into the lake, she was joined by another reveller that had also walked further from the maddening crowd, though this one seemed much happier than her if the bright smile on his face was anything to go by.

"Cormac," she greeted with a little nod and took the refreshed glass he offered her with a soft thank you, all the while wishing it was something infinitely stronger.

"You looked like you could use a drink," Cormac responded, and Lavender shrugged. There he was, subtle as a bludger.

Cormac seemed to pick up on her mood, miraculously given his legendary self-centred nature, though, rather than walking away, Cormac settled next to her along the short wall and began sipping his own drink.

Lavender spied him out of the corner of her eye and tried not to smile wryly at herself. Only this morning she would have thought Cormac approaching her with a drink was the beginning of one of her dream scenarios. She had imagined endless variations of good looking wizards approaching her, and Ron stealing in to stake his claim before she got away. Now that she knew she could have tackled Shacklebolt in the middle of the marquee and still got no reaction from Ron, it only made her want to laugh bitterly.

After the war, Cormac had been one of the many students that had come back to the school to fix the gaps in their education. He may not have been there for the final year under the Carrows, but the battle had affected them all. Even Oliver Wood had returned for a few weeks. Some weren't seeking education, merely happier memories to rid themselves of the bad.

Lavender looked across at the red-head boy steadily wrapping Hermione's curls around his fingers and then back at her silent guest. In many ways, she knew Cormac was a much bigger catch than Ron. He had blond hair with a delightfully crumpled wave and deep blue eyes that made him look almost Roman. His father was well connected, and his family were regarded as one of consequence. Cormac had long been considered one of the hottest wizards they went to school with by anyone's measure, but unfortunately for Lavender, he had never touched her heart.

"It won't last you know."

Cormac's voice, laced with his usual unshakable confidence, dragged Lavender from her internal game of increasing ire and she turned to him, glad of someone to unleash it on.

"And what would you know about serious relationships?"

Cormac snorted, and it made Lavender want to slap his face. "I know enough," he replied with a shrug and then he glanced over at Hermione with a faraway look that Lavender couldn't interpret.

"What? You think Ron's not good enough for her?" She spat. "She's lucky to get anyone's attention - the stuck up cow."

"No," Cormac replied lightly, with a quirk of his lips that Lavender just knew meant he was dying to laugh at her. "I just don't see them working out."

It was Lavender's turn to scoff. She had chased after Ronald Weasley for years, making herself available to him whenever he wanted. It had never mattered. Hermione had done absolutely nothing to cultivate or deserve his affection, and yet Ron was still besotted.

"Tell someone who cares," she said flippantly and looked down to inspect her glass, grimacing at the fingerprints she could see all over the bottom.

"Given that you've been standing here, glaring at them for twenty minutes, I rather think I am."

Lavender wrestled with herself, and the overwhelming desire to tell Cormac exactly where he could shove his champagne flute. But he suddenly laid a hand on her bare arm and squeezed gently.

"Look, I didn't come over here to start an argument. However badly you seem to want one. They're calling us to dinner, do you want to go in together?"

Lavender instinctively looked over to the courtyard, and as Cormac had said the vast majority of guests were now heading towards the main entrance hall. Parvati was talking to Percy Weasley of all people, Merlin she must have been bored. She would have to apologise to her friend later for all but abandoning her.

Lavender resolutely did not look back over to the bench as she gripped Cormac's arm in return. "Of course, I would like that."

Lavender looked around the ballroom and wondered whether her fifteen-year-old self would have ever believed she would grow up to think there was such a thing as too much sparkle.

The wedding she had been all but dragged along to was the most blatantly pretentious event Lavender had ever witnessed, and judging by the decor of the room they had been ushered into after collecting a drink, the reception was going to be even more so.

An hour later, Lavender dutifully, if unenthusiastically, raised her glass as the new Mr and Mrs Weasley entered. She watched as Pansy Parkinson, as was, sashayed into view, looking down her nose as if she were a queen among serfs and Lavender almost wished, just for a single moment, that Ron had married Granger. At least the wedding would have been simple. Not anymore tasteful than the current monstrosity, but on a smaller scale.

Lavender had spent the week before the wedding practising polite if non-comital comments she could offer when the situation called for it, practise she was grateful for when she was sat on a table next to a distant Weasley cousin who gushed about everything from the linen to the shoes Ron had on.

Lavender spent most of her time glancing towards the front of the room where Parvati, resplendently dressed in a beautiful sari, was sat with Percy Weasley. It was the most animated she had ever seen Ron's older brother, and Lavender couldn't fault his attention to her best friend. Percy seemed to almost fall over himself to pass Parvati dishes or fill up her water glass. Lavender supposed in a new set of dress robes Percy even looked passable; it just wasn't the match she had expected her friend to make. As she watched Percy lean down to offer Parvati an extra potato, it was a crippling reminder of what could have been. If she and Ron had made it Parvati and she would have been dating brothers. Something they had laughingly wished for when they first met.

"Well, here we are again."

Cormac breezed over to her table, looking better than Lavender had even seen him, in crisp black dress robes that must have been brand new and tailored just for him.

"I told you it wouldn't work," he said with a smirk as he elegantly dropped into the empty seat next to her. After the coffees had been cleared away, people had gone off to mingle until the dancefloor opened. Lavender had been debating whether or not to flit off into the night.

"You did," Lavender conceded with a shrug. Cormac had, of course, predicted that Ron and Hermione had not been fated to be together forever, and he had been proved right less than six months later when Hermione moved out, and Ron moved on.

Pansy Weasley was stood to the side of the ballroom proferring a menu at a caterer. She pointed at several items viciously, and even from the other side of the room Lavender could tell she wasn't happy.

"Plotting her death too?" Cormac asked with amusement, and Lavender found it within herself to laugh in reply.

"No. I was just thinking Ron might have his true Karma now."

Cormac smiled, "For what is worth I do think this one will last."

They both watched as Ron approached Pansy and seemingly had no reaction to her growing frustration. He simply grabbed his new wife's hand before stealing her away.

A short burst of noise from through the adjoining doors let them know that the band was starting up and Lavender gave the exit another fond look.

"Can I have this dance?" Cormac asked, no doubt having seen her intention.

Lavender weighed her options. Much as she had no real desire to be there, she knew her mood would not improve by being home alone with a bottle of wine and a romance novel. She put her bag down on the table decidedly and winked at Parvati who was raising her eyebrow at her from the bar.

"I would love to."

Lavender watched with a kind of bored attention as the former king of school bullies, Draco Malfoy, led an inelegant Hermione Granger - or Hermione Malfoy now she supposed, unless Granger had kept her own name - around the room for their first dace.

Malfoy leant forward to whisper something into his new wife's ear, and Hermione blushed. Like actually blushed, like the coy school girl Lavender had never known her to be. If pressed, Lavender would have said that Hermione was incapable of blushing, for fear that the action would pull blood away from her precious brain, but now there was clear evidence to the contrary.

Hermione looked up at Draco with unmasked affection, and Lavender felt her throat close. She might not have liked Granger, she might not have understood the girl at all, but she knew what love looked like, and Hermione was in it, up to her neck.

Suddenly everything Cormac had said before made sense. How Ron and Hermione would never have worked, and why the play by play running its course in front of her did.

The sad and lonely Malfoy of the end of the war had been replaced with a man who only showed little flashes of his meaner self, the self he had inhabited at all times when they were younger. Of course, he had a champion now.

Lavender let her head fall back on her chair and gazed around the room, coming to a stop when she could see a cluster of Malfoy's family at the far end of the hall. Lavender knew she would never find it within herself to like Hermione, but she almost loved her for the look of repressed pain currently dancing across Lucius' face as his new daughter in law twirled around the room.

Lavender saw Harry Potter, standing at the bar with his own look of bemused disgust directed at the couple. His new wife standing at his side, could not have looked more delighted.

Lavender continued her perusal of the rest of the guests and belatedly realised that she hadn't been looking for Ron. She supposed that was due in part to having seen him so much recently.

Parvati had agreed to marry Percy Weasley, for reasons Lavender was still unsure of, and as such, she and her former boyfriend had been thrown together often during the planning. They were to be the head bridesmaid and best man respectively. Lavender had realised with a great deal of guilt that a year or so ago she would have been thrilled at the prospect, not for the sake of her friend, but because she would have taken it as some divine proof that she and Ron were meant to be together.

Now she was happy to leave him and his untucked shirts in the care of his bossy, shrill wife. What Ron saw in Pansy she had no idea, but honestly, Lavender no longer cared.

When she managed to tear her eyes away from Lucius and Hermione as they performed the most awkward dance of all time, Lavender continued to glance around the room, cataloguing where everyone was before she got up and started to mingle. She might not have been looking for Ron, but she was, she realised with some amusement, idly tracking Cormac.

Cormac looked different to when she had seen him recently. His blond hair was longer and styled more casually, and it almost looked windswept. Instead of the black robes that he seemed to favour whenever she saw him at one of these events, he was wearing a set in dark blue that set off his features perfectly.

"We meet again," he said as he appeared her and Lavender did not hide her smile. She hadn't been watching his approach from the corner of her eye, and when he finally made it to her side, she pulled herself up in her seat to set her figure off to the best advantage.

"We do," she replied with a smile, "Though, I'm not entirely sure why I was invited."

Cormac smiled. "Well, I know I was, and why Krum's over there looking depressed. In a word Draco. I would never have thought his name was so accurate, but he's as possessive as an actual dragon. I believe he has invited every man who was ever within ten feet of Granger to make a point."

Lavender looked around the room until she saw Viktor Krum who was standing with an enthusiastic Oliver Wood. Lavender wouldn't have said he seemed depressed, though he did glance over at the 'happy couple' a few times.

"You're heartbroken I imagine?" Lavender said with just a hint of a question that Cormac obviously picked up on as he leant forward in his seat.

"No, not really. Hermione was just a girl I liked while I was at school. Anyway, this gentleman prefers blondes," he said with a wink.

Lavender eyed him incredulously. "Was that your extremely inelegant way of making a pass at me?"

"Well, that depends."

"On what?"

"Has it worked?"

Lavender giggled, she couldn't help herself, and for once there was nothing affected about her laughter. "Maybe," she answered coyly, and twirled her extremely expensive champagne flute, containing extremely expensive fizz, between her fingers.

Cormac smiled and dropped a hand onto her forearm, leaving spine-tingling trails with his fingers. "Well, as we have established that the happy couple won't miss us, shall we scarper? Would you like to go for a drink with me?"

Lavender glanced into her lap and looked at the way the crisp blue of Cormac's robes complimented the blush pink of hers and smiled. "Cormac, that sounds lovely."

Cormac had entered the Malfoy wedding and done the social lap as he was required to do. He had been to so many of these things over the last couple of years that he almost had it down to a fine art. He made sure he went over to congratulate the happy couple during the drinks hour before dinner. Cormac always liked to get it out of the way so he could disappear later if he so chose. However, on that evening he took great pains to lean in when he kissed Hermione on the cheek and made sure his earnestness was apparent when he told her she was the most beautiful bride he had ever seen.

Malfoy showed his discomfort by closing the gap between himself and his new wife and slid a pale hand around Hermione's slim waist. His reaction was a wonderful treat and something Cormac knew he would play over in his mind again and again. If he had liked the boy at all, he would have told Malfoy he had nothing to worry about. Hermione was no more interested in him than she was in anyone that wasn't her husband. But she was undoubtedly beautiful.

Cormac was surprised to find he was a little glum to see Granger getting married. She would never have wanted him, but he supposed he must have been harbouring the smallest of hopes while she was still single.

Cormac hadn't lied when he had spoken to Lavender at Graduation. He had known Hermione and Ron wouldn't last. And while he never thought he would be able to swoop in and be Hermione's white knight, there was the dream that someday - in the distant future - that they might have bumped into each other, in a shop or the bank or some other inane place. Enough time would have gone by, and he would have been able to ask her out, and tried again.

But that little feathered hope was grounded when Cormac saw the way Hermione looked at Malfoy. It was intense her gaze, and it had confirmed every suspicion Cormac had ever had about her passionate nature. Sadly.

After dinner, Cormac settled with his back against the wall and took stock of the guests. He had seen Lavender Brown during the service, walking in with her friends in an appropriate though formfitting gown of light pink. He had also noticed her looking at him during the evening and honestly it was a bit of a feather in his cap to get her attention.

Lavender was hotter than fire though she had always seemed like a bit of a bitch. Cormac looked back over at Granger, Malfoy he corrected himself, and laughed as she rolled her eyes at something Pansy Weasely said. Maybe a bit of a bitch was his type.

Cormac pushed himself off the wall and ran a hand through his hair to artfully disrupt his curls. It was time to leave, and he had no intention of doing so alone.

A/N: and that's it. The Mixtape is finished! Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed and added this collection to lists. I will now be adding one-shots to my new collection Elemental. If you follow me on Tumblr, you may be confused as I had planned for the last track to be Hermione x Yaxley, that story just wanted to expand so it will now be a multi-chapter I am hoping to start work on soon.

I have been working through edits for the previously posted tracks and so far I have added Track 6: Umbrella (Fleur Delacour x Hermione Granger) and Track 10: Sitting, Waiting, Watching (Anthony Goldstein x Hermione Granger) to my expansion list, but do drop me a line if you think there are others you would like to see more of.