The Lost Art of Romance by Manynames

Theodore didn�t like Draco Malfoy. He was an arrogant, insufferable git who seemed to have a different spoiled, vapid, pure-blooded girl hanging off his arm every week. He skated through life cushioned by his father�s reputation and his own air of superiority. Theodore, whose father had a reputation only for impoverished eccentricity, did not think that this was at all fair. He worked hard to do as well as he did, and it irked him that everyone ignored him in favour of a too-blond, too-pointy, rodent-faced arsehole.

Everyone included Pansy Parkinson. Theodore quite liked Pansy. She wasn�t very bright, and she shrieked every time she saw a spider whether it be alive and scuttling or dead and being used as a Potions ingredient but she smiled a lot and there had been that time when Snape had paired them in Potions and she�d at least tried to understand what Theodore had explained to her about the catalyst, and the explosion had only been partly her fault.

Thus, Theodore constructed a plan. He was reasonably articulate and he felt sure that he could adequately woo someone: he�d read books about this sort of thing. It was traditional for one to read poetry, and buy chocolates and stand underneath windows with a rose between your teeth while playing love songs on the guitar. He immediately ruled out the guitar. He couldn�t play an instrument and he felt that he was more inclined towards the theoretical aspects of courtship than the ones which required being outside after curfew.

And so, on the next Hogsmeade weekend he bought the most romantic chocolate he could find: a reasonably expensive rose crafted out of chocolate. Apparently, if you left it for long enough, it would carry on growing. Theodore suspected that very few people managed to do that. This couldn�t fail, he felt: it combined flowers and chocolates and, if he could find a decent enough bit to write on the gift tag, poetry. It would probably be irresistible, he felt.

He eventually found something that sounded very soppy in a book he took from under Crabbe�s pillow, wrinkling his nose at the idea of Crabbe reading love poetry. Theodore didn�t like love poetry. Why couldn�t they just say what they meant? If your girlfriend was going to get offended because you told her she had great breasts, then you should dump her, not tell compare them to snow-covered mountains or delicate flowers. It was probably wise to start off with poetry though, rather than breasts. Theodore made a mental note of that: no breasts.

He debated about what to do with the chocolate, eventually deciding that it would be less likely for someone else to steal it and eat the gift that he�d put all the work into if he just gave it directly to Pansy. The worst she could do was laugh at him and tell him he didn�t have a chance in hell and then curse him so that his genitals shrivelled up and fell off� Theodore hoped that she didn�t do that.

It was after Transfiguration one day that he eventually did it, waiting until he could get Pansy on her own and then he handed it to her with a hopeful smile.

She read the card with her dark eyebrows raised and then looked at what he�d given her.

"I don�t like chocolate or flowers. They�re unimaginative and poetry is the last standby of anyone who is desperately trying to get laid. Frankly, I prefer jewellery, ," she told him with a slight smile.

Theodore spluttered, trying to protest. He was lost for words for possibly the first time in his life.

"However," Pansy continued archly, "I�m a forgiving person. Hogsmeade, Saturday, noon. Pick me up from the common room. We�ll have lunch. You can pay."

Theodore could only nod. And people said romance was dead.