I took it.

Because what else was I supposed to do? Scream? Run? Vanish into thin air?

The doors loomed ahead, carved with intertwining serpents and gilded ivy. Beyond them, a sea of silks, feathers, and monocles waited to watch me sign my life away.

I stepped forward.

Pansy’s handkerchief was already a crumpled mess in her hands. Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling like she’d just won the lottery. Which, in pureblood terms, she kind of had. A successful wedding. A respectable match. A proper pureblood lady making her family proud.

Blaise caught my eye and gave me two thumbs up. Far too enthusiastic. Someone should’ve drugged his champagne early.

Draco, the smug bastard, raised his glass in a silent toast from his seat. Like I was performing a particularly impressive trick at his birthday party.

And there, near the back, shoved between Mattheo Riddle and Lorenzo Berkshire, sat my mother. Stone-faced. Unreadable. A living portrait of maternal disappointment dipped in silk.

No one looked happier than my father.

No one looked less happy than me.

And his seat—the one at the very end of the third row, deliberately left empty—stared back at me like a wound.