For Shepherd Queen, I hope you like it!

Word Count: 813

thank you for clearing that up

Draco Malfoy would never admit it to anyone, but it was Neville Longbottom whom he had to thank for his marriage to Astoria in the end.

It wasn't that he had been the one to introduce them or anything, no that had been Daphne, if only by accident—but that was another story entirely.

He hadn't saved her life directly or anything either. Like, he had probably saved all of their lives by helping kill Voldemort, but if that were the reason behind this, then it would be a whole lot more logical to thank either Granger, Weasley, or Potter—Harry. They were the ones leading everything, after all.

Although Neville had without a doubt taken an important role in that as well. That, however, was not at all the thing Draco had in mind.

What Neville had done was convince Astoria that Draco wasn't a total asshole and Draco that Astoria was actually smart and worth talking to.

The first impression that they had gotten all the way back when Astoria had been a first year—Draco had been in his fifth back then and oh so stupid, as well as naive—hadn't exactly been a positive one.

Astoria hadn't been able to understand her Charms homework at the time—an essay about the importance of correct pronunciation—and Draco had dismissed her as unintelligent right there.

What he hadn't seen was the intense debate that eventually included almost everyone in the common room where she had argued her point that repeated mispronunciation under controlled circumstances would actually result in the creation of new spells and that repeating this process might result in anything, even finding a way around something as elemental and universally accepted as Gamp's Laws of Transfiguration. And despite starting out alone on her side as a first year, she actually won the discussion—as much as any discussion in Slytherin was ever won, at least.

But Draco didn't hear that. He thought she was stupid and treated her like it, which in turn gave her the impression that he was nothing more than an arrogant snob—which, to be fair, he had been at the time.

For the entire duration of their shared stay in Hogwarts—all four years of it, as Draco had gladly taken the option of repeating his seventh year when it had been presented to him—these opinions remained unchallenged because of a mutual unspoken agreement not to interact under any circumstances.

When it was necessary—like at Daphne's engagement party when both had been invited—they simply opted for glaring at each other until it was possible for them to go their separate ways again.

Until Neville Longbottom happened to bring on the subject of Draco helping Harry to raise young Teddy during a meeting he had with Astoria regarding her checking and recasting the charms on the Leaky Cauldron that his wife Hannah had just taken over. Neither Astoria nor Neville later recalled precisely how they got onto the topic of Draco, but in retrospect, Astoria was very thankful that they did, as this was the first proof she had of Draco not being a total git.

Similarly, it was Neville how talked about Astoria doing that very thing at the next Weasley family meal—that Neville, Harry, and Granger among others had joined voluntarily and Draco had somehow been roped into attending as well.

Bill had been slightly insulted that he hadn't been called, until Neville pointed out that it had happened around the time his daughter Dominique had been due.

Meanwhile Draco was stunned at how competent Astoria had handled the whole thing and that she had been Neville's second choice at all. That really didn't fit with the view he had of her and a later conversation with Neville as they were leaving had cleared up that it had been Draco's fault all along—as depressingly many things were.

The next time the two of them met, they had started apologizing, kept talking, and somehow gotten to the point of having a polite discussion about the benefits of of a Muggle Repelling charm versus a Notice-Me-Not.

It had been a lot of fun, as both of them were hesitant to admit. But they did so before they left and that was the important thing.

They had conversations like that the next two or three times that they met before they decided to schedule a meeting in their own time.

One thing came to another and it didn't take Draco all that long to realized that he had fallen in love with Astoria Greengrass. Another two to work up the courage to tell her, though.

Once that had happened, it didn't take all that long until Draco had begun to gather the strength to propose. Which Astoria had proceeded to actually do before he had managed.

And well, yeah, there was a good reason why Neville Longbottom of all people was Draco's best man.