Crushed - Part Two
Title: Crushed - Part 2
Pairing: Pansy/Luna, with a touch of Pansy/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Her kisses were not a poor substitute at all.
Notes: My first hand at femmelash. Many thanks to wheatgerm for her thorough beta skills.
Crushed, Part 2 Part 1
"I don't think he'll make it." Blaise Zabini winced as one of Slytherin team's new Chasers dropped a Quaffle on Greg Goyle's head. "Greg would not let him out of the locker room without an arse-kicking."
"He's got brawn, that's for sure, our little Adam Pucey," Pansy answered. "He might make it yet."
"Let's hope he uses that troll-like strength of his against Gryffindor."
The late October cold snap did little to deter the Slytherin team from booking the Quidditch pitch for five consecutive days of practice. Pansy thought the other Houses had little reason to be surprised; Slytherin always made it a point to usurp the field before each game. The wind-chapped team had another motivation: they were playing Gryffindor in the season opener.
"I'm glad you came out, Pansy." Blaise kept his eyes ahead, on the dumpy flying figure of Vince Crabbe and the thickening cotton-wool clouds moving across a quicksilver sky.
The shadow they cast on the pitch turned the neatly trimmed grass of the pitch from emerald to murky algae. It was almost as dark as the green of Pansy's eyes. "The shade of absinthe," her mother described them. Pansy was content to call it something else: “just green.”
"You know I like Quidditch," she said, rearranging the scarf around her neck. Her ears stung from the chill.
"True. I thought this might be a little hard for you. You didn't come to the Quidditch trials early in September."
She hadn't. Watching tryouts had become their tradition since Draco won his Seeker title five years ago. The ritual, like many other events in Pansy's years at Hogwarts, was embedded with memories of him.
"I'm not one to break tradition," she said.
"Speaking of traditions -- ow!" Blaise jumped to his feet to wave down Vince. "Mate, you have got to tell your new Chaser to quit defending the hoops. It's not his job!" Pucey was indeed hovering by the hoops.
"Speaking of traditions?" Pansy prodded, wishing to take the heat off the third year student. They needed all the luck they could get this year. The Gryffindor beaters had come a long way, and it was almost certain that Ginny Weasley would succeed Potter as Seeker.
"Hogsmeade weekend's coming up," Blaise answered, resuming his seat. Like Draco, he was tall and had to fold his long legs into the meager space between their seats and the backrests of the row below them. "Will you come?"
Since this was their last year, her friends had come to linger over each time marker -- from Quidditch trials to the ever-intimidating N.E.W.T.S in June -- with uncharacteristic sentimentality.
"Yeah, I'll come." Pansy waved at Millicent Bulstrode and Daphne Greengrass, watching them take their seats nearest to the pitch. Millicent hated heights.
They would be an odd number: Vince, Greg, Blaise, Millicent, herself.
As if hearing her thoughts, Blaise reached around to squeeze her shoulder. "We'll drink to Draco."
"It's a bit weird, isn't it," she said, her eyes fixed on the intricate knit of her violet scarf. "There'll be no more 'first game of the season' with Gryffindor next year."
"Yeah. But there will be bigger things out there, too."
"We just won't be doing them together." Pansy was seized with an irrational sense of foreboding. If she had ever found Hogwarts stifling with its regimented student life, she suddenly found the world outside it dizzyingly large.
"Oh, we'll be in touch, I'm sure." Only pride and pedigree could prevent Blaise from expressing uncertainty. "I know we will."
Many of them, save for Millicent, were without siblings. They had come to regard their circle as more than schoolmates; they had adopted each other as brothers and sisters.
"I hope so. Where will you be, what will you do?" She watched Millicent and Daphne flail their scarves wildly like standards as Greg and Vince artfully smacked two Bludgers. They sailed past each other like intersecting comets.
"Mum wants me to return to Florence to settle matters with my father's estate. It's been bequeathed to me. I become its lord when I turn 18."
"So, a life of lazing about for our Blaise," Pansy said, smiling a little. "I suppose I'll continue to be filthy rich." She tossed her dark hair for dramatic effect. Blaise laughed. "I'd like to work with my mother's friend, you know...the one who made that pink gown for me for the Yule Ball?"
"A fashionista, hm? How very glamorous. I envision a future for Greg and Vince as bouncers for some London dance club."
It was Pansy's turn to laugh. "You've got it wrong. Greg will carry on the family trade of selling arms."
"I suppose Vince shall have a good cry every night before bed, then. No Greggy-poo to snuggle with."
"He'll just have more time to pine silently for Millicent."
"Ah. Yes. So very manly, that pining away stuff."
"Of course you'll never understand," Pansy sniffed, "being every girl's object of affection. Say, if Ginny Weasley wasn't a Gryffindor, would you have asked her for tea at Madam Puddifoot's?"
Blaise squinted his eyes. "No. She will still be a Weasley. Also, I loathe Puddifoot's, it's for gauche people. Besides, friends don't let friends incur the secret mockery of others by allowing them to take their tea there."
***
"Madam Puddifoot's," Luna answered, pushing her hands into mismatched woolen mittens.
The sky gave a threatening rumble as angry pot-bellied clouds moved sluggishly across the horizon. An icy wind whistled through the naked trees, rustling up the last of the fallen leaves. The growing crowd of Hogsmeade-bound students seemed to bunch tighter as they queued up before Filch and Professor Flitwick with their permission slips.
Pansy eyed the gloves from the corner of her eye: one was a bright periwinkle blue, its partner a yellow-and-red striped number with two interlinked "CC"s on them.
"That's not a good place," she said. "Those gloves are hideous, Luna."
Pansy made no effort to conceal her developing friendship with Luna Lovegood, nor did she waste the time publicizing it. Inter-house friendships were not unusual, but she could do without accusations of false allegiances. Luna, for her part, acted the way she always did: with a complete lack of self-awareness. She just seemed content to have a friend.
"I lost their partners," Luna said, standing on tiptoes to see above the crowd. To the undiscerning eye, they were two students with undeterminable familiarity. "I like Madam Puddifoot's."
"It’s for sappy couples.”
"Is it?" Her eyes widened in profile. "I never knew that."
"Luna," Pansy whispered, teasing. "You knew that."
Luna's cheek dimpled in an embarrassed smile. "Puddifoot's has lovely people."
"So does The Three Broomsticks."
Pansy was pleased to see her enter the pub later that afternoon, pink-faced from the chill outside. The merriment indoors compensated for the overcrowding and delayed service. There was not a table or booth that wasn’t crammed with students and adult patrons, whose animated conversations were punctuated with laughter and calls for more drink across the room. Madam Rosmerta herself sat with two jolly-looking uniformed officials.
The tickling buzz of the Butterbeer faded Pansy's surroundings to a haze of sound and color, where the only lucid point was watching Luna squeeze herself between tables to seat herself with Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom.
"Bad mood?" Millicent said, pushing a Butterbeer toward her.
"No," Pansy said, tipping back the small tankard into her open mouth. Luna's wide eyes lit up when they caught sight of her. "Do I look good?" she asked no one in particular, feeling goofily self-conscious.
Blaise swallowed a burp. "No," he answered, obviously moved by the Butterbeer; his fifth, to be exact. "You look amazing."
"I fancy you, Zacharias!" Millicent crowed at the passing Hufflepuff, who looked both frightened and flattered by the attention. Everyone within hearing distance of the declaration laughed uproariously.
Vince looked peeved, and would have chased after Smith with a barstool, had Greg not vomited all over his lap. The stench of Ogden's firewhiskey mingled with the candy-sweet scent of Butterbeer and Millicent's melting ice cream.
Pansy lifted her half-full tankard in Luna's direction. She could almost glimpse her dimples across the room. The remaining Butterbeer slid down her throat like a river of thick honey, with a sweetness that came not just from taste but also from the act itself. Pansy pushed back her fringe. She felt as though she was drowning.
When she looked up, Luna was still there, her smoke-gray eyes watchful.
***
A crate of Butterbeers and half a bottle of Odgen's later, Pansy and Millicent tipsily made their way to Bettina's Bewitching Boutique to clear their heads and browse for early Christmas presents.
Millicent, quickly sobering, was distraught. "He knows and he hates me," she groaned, absently stroking a stack of chartreuse scarves. "My image! Why didn't you stop me?"
Pansy turned away from a full-body display mirror, in front of which she was straightening her hair. "We would've, but you then you leapt over the table and tried to snog him."
Millicent was aghast. "You can't see it, but a little bit of me just died inside. Tell me why I shouldn't drown myself in the Black Lake right now. Go on."
"Because there was no leaping snog," Pansy answered, biting the insides of her cheeks. "Look, just...play it cool on Monday."
Millicent grumbled and disappeared behind a rack of silk robes.
"It wasn't that bad, Millicent. Honest."
"Unrequited love sucks."
She sounded so miserable that Pansy had to hug her. Of course, Millicent was so tall and broad that the gesture itself proved somewhat of a challenge.
"Er?" Zacharias Smith stood at the entrance of the shop, frozen with indecision. He looked out of place in the boudoir-themed shop, dressed in garish Hufflepuff colors and a common scarf.
"Bugger off, Smith," Pansy cheerfully called out. "We're in the middle of plotting how to next confuse you. I think I shall fall in love with you next."
Zacharias harrumphed and -- interestingly -- reluctantly exited, running headlong into a startled Luna Lovegood. Outside, he was greeted by the hiss of falling rain. Over his shoulder, Pansy could see students rushing inside warmly lit shops or seeking refuge under their awnings. Even The Hog's Head, adjacent to Bettina's, was packed to the rafters.
"Oh!" Luna exclaimed, steadying herself. Her face, Pansy noticed, was lightly beaded with rainwater. A part of her -- the same part that had observed Luna at The Three Broomsticks with queer awareness -- simmered with unexplained yearning. She knew, even with her eyes closed, the lay of the freckles dotting the bridge of that nose, how wetness dotted them now, and the waves of fair hair that framed her face.
Was she soft, as soft as she looked?
Pansy flushed.
"Hello," Luna said, noncommittal and undisturbed by the weather outside. Lightning flashed, electrifying the beveled windows of the shop. Pansy dazedly wondered if this was what it was like to be inside a star.
"Hi."
Luna made her way toward the back.
"Should I talk to him?" Millicent murmured, lost in deliberation. "Yeah. I'm going to talk to him."
She squared her broad shoulders and stepped out into the storm. The shop's front entrance doors slapped shut.
Pansy watched Millicent's departing figure until it disappeared in the slanting gray of the storm.
Slowly, she made her way to the back of the shop.
***
The box was cherry wood, a rich, dark brown carved with reliefs of slumbering manticores and flying unicorns. The lid, fastened with an ornate silver catch, flipped open to reveal an interior lined with silver silk.
Inside was a pair of gloves, midnight-blue and permanently charmed with a Warming spell.
To think is to dream, and to dream is to think.
Of you.
D
"When?" Pansy heard herself ask the puzzled shopkeeper, a Miss Desdemona Doyle, who worried a square of a monogrammed kerchief between her hands.
Talking to Luna had lost its importance. She was as peripheral as the carpeted floor and a tray of sewing pins.
"This morning," the woman stammered, paling. "Please don't ask me any more, Miss Parkinson."
Pansy mumbled a perfunctory "thank you" before turning on her heels, snatching random robes and dresses en route to the shop's farthest dressing room.
In the privacy of the pink-lit room, Pansy sank in a heap of silks and satin, the box clutched to her chest, bowed over it as though it was a living, precious thing. She felt like a bell, struck and still feeling the presence of a long-departed stimulus.
If her heart had been heavy before, it was made weightless now, trembling with a bittersweet revelation. This sense of fragility frightened her. The storm outside was nothing compared to the tempest she was feeling. Her tears were salty-sweet in her mouth, a mixture of familiar sorrow and Butterbeer.
"Pansy...?"
"No."
She burst out of the dressing room, past Luna and out into the rain and empty street, immediately shocked by the onslaught of wind and water. Even the lights of the shops seemed to dim, a protective gesture to preserve the gaiety they housed.
Was she the bearer of good news? Joy and sadness warred inside her as she ran door-to-door, tracing the divergent veins of Hogsmeade until they converged near the dour-looking Shrieking Shack. Her hair lashed across her cheeks and exposed neck; mud caked her legs, and her soaked clothes hung on her body like an aggrieved specter.
Blaise saw her first.
"Merlin's balls," he gasped, snapping out of his inebriation -- he and the boys were sipping Kamehameha's Beer Brew -- when she crashed into The Three Broomsticks, sharp-eyed but dumb, feverish but alert with news. She was dimly aware of the kerfluffle she caused, but she didn't care.
"He's still alive," she breathed into Blaise's ear. He wrapped his cloak around her shaking shoulders, pulling her away from sight and into the boys' darkened booth "Here, he's still alive. Quick, boys, order another round. Let's drink...Let's drink to..."
And then, there was only darkness.
***
"Awake, I see," Madam Pomfrey said, peering at her. The nurse faded into the darkness of sleep, her tut-tutting a whisper in the murky landscape of Pansy's dreams.
--
Blaise was next. He looked disheveled, a dark, disgruntled jungle cat. "Pansy feeling sour?"
Pansy rolled to her left and heaved helplessly on to the immaculate floor before passing out.
--
All of Slytherin House seemed to have packed itself into the confines of her infirmary room. No one was listening to Madam Pomfrey, who could barely be heard above the din of well-meaning wishes.
"Eat." Millicent pressed a cool hand against Pansy's sweaty forehead. "Blimey, what kind of plague did you contract?"
Pansy reached for a slice of toast and managed to cram a bite inside her mouth. It tasted like dry parchment, but it was better than the bile coating her tongue.
--
Ginny Weasley was glaring at her. "Luna asked me to look in on you."
Pansy tapped into an unknown reserve of strength to roll her eyes. "Fuck you and your noble fucking heart, Weasley."
She fell asleep.
--
Crabbe and Goyle were singing a terrible rendition of "Good King Wenceslas," and attempting to substitute lyrics they didn't know with bawdy commentary on Hufflepuff girls and Neville Longbottom.
"Draco's all right, he's alive and well," Pansy croaked. "But your song is so damned awful."
She drifted off to the sound of their surprised chuckles.
--
"You don't really fancy me, do you?" Zacharias Smith hovered awkwardly by her bedside, a bouquet of sagging pansies in his arms. He wore Millicent's favourite sky blue sweater and had combed his blond hair away from his face. He gazed at Pansy with unmistakable hunger.
"No, Smith!" Pansy said, alarmed, tugging the flannel covers up to her chin. "Good God, no...Say. What d'you think of Millicent Bulstrode?"
"Um..."
The pull of sleep proved too powerful. Pansy never heard his answer.
--
"I'm sorry I asked Ginny," Luna was saying. She was kneeling on the cold, stone floor, so that they were eye-to-eye. Her chin rested on the backs of her palms, which were, in turn, splayed flat on the cot's flannel blanket. She was backlit by candlelight, as ghost-like as she was the night all this started. "Is there anything I can do?"
"You," Pansy answered, brushing her mouth across the pointed tips of Luna's fingers, winning over temptation by ignoring the girl's bottom lip. She felt instantly guilty.
She cried herself to sleep.
***
"Four days. You were so very ill for four days," Blaise said, examining Pansy's new gloves with an appraising eye. "These are very nice."
"I wish I had thrown up on Ginny Weasley instead of you," Pansy said.
"Technically, you didn't throw up on me. Just...in the general direction of my favorite loafers."
Pansy reached for the gloves and tugged them on. With them on, her hands looked quite small.
When she felt well enough to walk, she and Blaise made their way to Greenhouse Five, where Pansy could catch up on missed assignments. She felt him watching her as she clipped purring shrubs and stroked biting flowers.
The first snow fell that afternoon. They watched the flakes drift, dusting the school like fine sugar until the mountains and the environs of the castle resembled something out of a fairytale story.
"I'm not one to judge, Pansy," Blaise began, breaking the silence with his quiet baritone voice. "But I know you and Lovegood have become quite...friendly this term. You’ve been keeping the others from pranking her. I wonder, what sort of things is she doing for you?"
Pansy continued to watch the snow collect in the grooves and angles of the glass planes, framing Hogwarts with the haziness of a dream. In her mind, she could see Luna's blonde hair and her mismatched mittens. Her hands curled inside Draco's gloves.
"Are you...?" Pansy could see Blaise's reflection bite his lip with uncertainty. "Do you fancy girls?"
"Have I ever fancied girls?"
Blaise reached over her shoulders to touch her hands, now both pressed open-palmed against a windowpane. He touched the soft leather, stroking them with contemplative slowness, all the while resting his chin on top of her head. So many girls would sell their eyeteeth for a moment of such intimacy, platonic or romantic, with him. For some reason, her mind flashed back to their train ride to school during sixth year, which she spent running her fingers through Draco's hair as Blaise smirked over an unshared, personal joke.
She never cared to ask.
Pansy wondered how they must look like to outsiders now -- Slytherin's Lothario cocooning Slytherin's resident princess.
Or shrew, depending on whom you asked.
"I had no idea you two were so close," he said.
"I had no idea this would even be an issue."
Blaise gave her trapped hands a slight squeeze. "Oh, I believe you were well-aware it would be. Are you fraternizing with --"
"-- the enemy?" Pansy finished for him, feeling her hackles rise. "What a terrible thing to say."
He lowered his mouth to her ear. In such close proximity, Pansy could smell the cinnamon in his breath and the distinct, spiciness of his cologne. His lashes lowered with dangerous coquetry.
"I’m only looking out for your best interests. Lovegood has already picked her side. The last we need is for you to defect. I may know nothing about the bonds of friendship between girls, but what I've been seeing looks like something else."
"You really need to get laid, Zabini."
"I'm not judging --"
She swiveled in the circle of his arms. "Oh, but you are. Don't lie."
"Draco?"
"He'll come home," she answered. To think is to dream, and to dream is to think. Of you. "His letter indicated that and everything more. You best release me, Blaise. People might start talking."
***
"People are talking," Luna said.
Pansy glanced up from her Herbology homework. They were in the Room of Requirement, presently transformed into a study complete with a roaring fireplace.
"Oh?"
"That you, Blaise Zabini and Zacharias Smith are involved in a torrid three-way affair."
Pansy snorted. It had been days since the greenhouse conversation with Blaise, and while they had attributed that strange night to the commotion surrounding Draco’s letter and her illness, their recent exchanges had been cordial but no longer as friendly. What appeared to be a hopeful sign of Draco's well-being -- "He must be all right," Vince had said, "to send Pansy gloves and a handwritten letter" - was their neutral ground.
Blaise made no more mention of Luna, though Pansy suspected on his part, some yet-to-be unleashed test of her fidelity. Her hand crept inside her robes to touch Draco's letter, folded and already worn from repeated readings.
"They're also saying that I've seduced you," Luna continued, chewing on her Sugar Quill.
Pansy stretched. "How silly."
She returned to her essay.
"Zabini fancies you, you know," she said after a length of time. "It must be agony for him, to love his best mate's girl."
Pansy shifted uncomfortably. Considering Blaise in that light was an alien and disturbing concept she didn't care to visit.
"It happens a lot. Roger Davies and Cedric Diggory both fancied Cho Chang, and that's way before Harry -- before Harry entered the picture."
She grew silent, her eyes distant with memory. Pansy watched her with mild irritation.
"Miss him, do you?" she asked, the prickliness of her delivery surprising even her. She rarely thought about Potter and his hangers-on unless she had to.
"More than Ronald," Luna said, in that unguarded way of hers. "He belongs to Hermione anyway," she said by way of consolation. "Harry is..."
Pansy abandoned her homework. Praising Potter had practically been quotidian reflex in all his years at Hogwarts. The school’s patron saint since he was eleven, the Boy Who Lived commanded both doubt and adulation -- as all living legends do. But to hear of him from so close a confidant ... The Slytherin in her saw no duplicity in this; only a Machiavellian appreciation of the rewards often yielded by unconventional friendships.
"Potter is what?" Pansy prompted.
"Alone." Something like pain flickered in her eyes. "Fighting the good fight."
The poetic injustice was too much. Of course, life always been unfair to Potter, poor green-eyed Potter growing up in a cupboard surrounded by disgusting Muggles. But fortune has smiled upon him too, given him so many blessings that make the most mistreated martyr in heaven blush with shame.
Potter had been blessed with countless lives, each of which he seemed eager to throw away. People like Draco weren't so lucky.
"Oh, I don't know about that," Pansy said coldly. "He has an adoring public and Ginny Weasley, a princess waiting for his homecoming."
"We're all waiting," Luna pointed out.
Pansy pushed back her chair, and, feeling very much like Blaise, dramatically swiped at the spread of parchment, quills and books laid out on the desk. It accomplished nothing but ruin an hour's worth of homework.
She began to pace the length of the room. The enchanted fire in the hearth hissed and flared as she stalked to and fro before its mouth.
"Waiting," she spat, unable to look at Luna, who sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor. "We're all waiting. That's all we could do."
It was a struggle to translate her thoughts into words, torn between self-censorship -- a Slytherin never reveals a secret without a fair exchange -- and a deep-seated need to confide freely, to purge herself of doubt and angst that had accumulated for months in the growing disquiet of her mind. It had become an animal, roiling inside her like a trapped beast scrabbling for release. Patience had never been her virtue, but she had had to learn it, to strive for it, in order to better understand what was being asked of her.
To wait. To remain here in body, but chase after Draco with the ghost of her good intentions. It was a helpless way to love, and she wondered, for the first time, finally meeting Luna's silvery eyes, if their immature ardor could withstand his savage passage to manhood and her girlish expectations.
"What, no words of insight from you?" She advanced toward Luna. "No clever observations? Care to share any universal truths?"
Luna stayed quiet, but there was something in her eyes Pansy could almost feel.
A retreat. Not you, too.
And it was more than she could take. Luna's unsolicited honesty had a tendency to enrage her, but they had never been offered with malice. She had a way of removing Pansy from the isolation of her sorrow, by distraction or by initiating her to a wider, shared experience, that she wasn't alone -- and Pansy hated her a little for that, too, for turning a pain she thought unique so very common.
"You'll never understand," Pansy said, "how it feels like to be left behind."
"No," Luna said slowly, unfolding her legs to stand until she and Pansy were face to face. The bitterness in her eyes cut Pansy to her core. "You can never understand, because you've always been loved. You are surrounded by it, you are drowning in it. You're so greedy, Parkinson, for demanding so much of it!"
Pansy was stunned silent.
"What is sacrifice to you?" Luna continued, advancing while Pansy backtracked until she was pressed against her desk. A chair stood between them. "An illness, heartbreak, separation? You’re so fragile, so selfish."
"If it's Potter you're harping on ab --"
"It's not about Harry! It's never always about Harry or Malfoy or what you feel!”
But Pansy had already guessed her secret, haphazardly hidden by an off-putting persona and the flinch at the mention of Potter’s name -- that she loved Harry Potter with the silent, steady deepness of one who understood his mysteries but could never share them.
Never had Pansy loathed him so much. Potter, whose rejection consumed Draco for years. Potter, whose very survival came at the cost of so many lives of her Death Eater family. Potter, who was loved by blood traitors and Mudbloods and Luna Lovegood.
"You love Potter," Pansy said. "Oh, my God. You do."
"What, you want mine, too? Unbelievable!"
"Is it too good for me now? Don't think I deserve it, do you?"
"You think nothing can ever be too good for you!"
"At least you're close enough to reality to see that!"
"You make it sound like we all ought to worship you!” Luna began to push the chair away with her left hand, and it was plain to see by the tight sharpness of her _expression that Pansy’s outburst would not pass as easily as her casually cruel remarks about Parvati Patil’s gaudy hairclips, the haplessness of Hogwarts’ house elves and Luna’s lack of social grace.
"You make it sound like your life is a pity party." Pansy attempted to sidestep but Luna’s hands had braced her at the spot.
"You live yours like one."
"Oh. Oh, shut up."
She released Pansy. But the steel in her eyes made it plain that this was not an act of defeat. What was important and frivolous to Luna Lovegood was a conundrum. "Malfoy's going to come home, you know," she said.
It was, to Pansy's mind, as good as concession as she was going to get. She reached out to pat Luna's cheek, her fingers stopping at the plane of her cheekbones. Her skin was hot to the touch, incongruous to Luna’s icy coloring. Without thinking, Pansy pressed a kiss to the girl’s cheek.
Slytherins never apologize. "Unless it's to the Dark Lord or your mother," Draco once said. The crack had made Millicent laugh so hard that she squirted pumpkin juice out of her left nostril.
Pansy, remembering that day during fifth year, smiled into the kiss. Luna didn't pull away.
She just tilted her head to catch Pansy's mouth in hers.
Soft. She was soft, as soft as she looked. Pansy leaned into the kiss, her stomach fluttering with the near-painful exhilaration that came with stumbling into unfamiliar but not necessarily unpleasant territory. But she had crossed the line before the kiss, before The Three Broomsticks, before she began intimidating Orla and her Ravenclaw friends into returning Luna’s stolen belongings.
How long had she been standing on the other side of the line?
"Other side?" Luna murmured against Pansy's lips, releasing a puff of breath scented with the aftertaste of Sugar Quills.
"Your head," Pansy said huskily, leaning into Luna’s open mouth, eager to take advantage of her bewilderment, "slant it to the side."
She bowed forward when it seemed like Luna was about to pull away, but it was only to -- nervously, Pansy saw between half-lidded eyes -- shove away the chair separating them. Pansy reached around to pull her closer, her small hands spanning the other girl's waist. She felt the tips of Luna's waist-length hair tickle the backs of her palms.
"I think..." Luna stepped closer. Her hands, shaking, found their place on Pansy's shoulders. She shivered when Pansy gave her upper lip an experimental lick.
"You think what, Lovegood," Pansy softly, but not unkindly, jeered. Growing more courageous, she pushed the tip of her tongue between Luna's parted lips to dart in greedily, her heart pounding with something that had nothing to do with feeling good about doing something she wasn't supposed to, but sheer, sheer pleasure. Luna gasped when Pansy pulled her closer, tighter against her breasts.
Braver now, Pansy broke off the kiss to gauge a reaction. Luna touched her mouth, swollen and stained dark by lipstick and the pressure of several kisses.
She didn't resist when Pansy swooped in again to nip at her bottom lip. Her hands ran over a landscape of new curves, her senses thrilling that something she deemed unremarkable on herself could be the opposite on someone as unexpected as Luna Lovegood.
Pansy's hands found their way to the nape of Luna's neck, and then to the curves of her jaw and chin. Emboldened by her advances, Luna allowed her hands to venture past Pansy's shoulders, caressing the exposed skin of her throat before sliding down her sides to rest on her hips.
"Oh." Pansy tipped her head back as Luna, shy but determined, teased the juncture of her earlobe and jaw. Under her robes, her body exploded in goose pimples.
"Oh," she tugged Luna closer, "oh, where did you learn that?"
She felt Luna smile against her neck.
***
The weeks leading up to Christmas flew in a flurry of exams, study groups, prefect holiday duties, and a Quidditch game against Hufflepuff that put Slytherin ahead of the House Cup running by a good one hundred fifty points.
"Watch your step, Weasley," Pansy sneered, elbowing Ginny Weasley as they passed each other in the crowded Charms corridor.
Behind her, Blaise, Millicent, Vince and Greg sniggered appreciatively.
"Guess your shoulders aren't broad enough to carry Gryffindor," Millicent snickered. "Your arse is another story, though."
Weasley broke away from Longbottom to fight through throngs of students, her eyes spitting fire and her mouth working its way through several choice words. Pansy stopped her short with her wand. Its tip glowed violet with a ready Bat Bogey Hex.
"Tsk, tsk, Weasley," she said, with an arrogant toss of her hair. "Fancy twenty points from Gryffindor?"
"I wish you wouldn't give my friends such a hard time," Luna said the weekend before Christmas holiday.
They were atop the Astronomy Tower looking down at the frozen surface of the Black Lake, glittering wetly like an island of hard obsidian in a sea of alabaster.
Pansy drew back from Luna's neck. "I wish they wouldn't give mine hell."
It was an area of contention, and had been since Longbottom nearly caught them snogging in the Trophy Room. Blaise, still suspicious and more disapproving than a Malfoy elder, had openly accused Luna of everything short of being the next Dark Lord.
"She doesn't deserve that sort of honor, the blood traitor," he commented snidely, before Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan jumped him from behind, nearly breaking their backs as they toppled off the moving fourth-floor staircase before it connected to an adjacent landing. Fortunately for the three, they crashed onto a swinging third-floor staircase.
"Luna," Pansy said, moving in to trap her between an immobilized telescope and her own body, "my courtesies extend only to you.”
Luna grasped Pansy's gloved hands, pulling them behind her back in her embrace. "Slytherins really draw their lines, don't they?"
"We stand firm, yes."
They kissed.
In actuality, drawing lines between Houses was easy compared to defining what they had. The rituals of day-to-day living were constantly under negotiation. Pansy wasn't allowed to hex Longbottom as long as Luna kept Ginny from pranking Blaise, and they'd agreed never to discuss Daily Prophet articles and The Quibbler's series on rare beast sightings, nor hide copies of either from each other. It was new, generally frustrating and neither knew where they were headed.
It was far and away from love, and, for Pansy, who continued to maintain that the perplexing lust Luna inspired had little to do with replacing or loving Draco any less. She was certain the strength of her love would outlast her liaison with Luna, even if her fidelity had not.
Nevertheless, the ghost of Draco’s promises visited Pansy in the hours between the spare minutes she spent pressing Luna up against the Restricted Section’s darkest corners; the breathless, clumsy touches under the Quidditch stands; and the early Saturday mornings spent at the edge of the Forbidden Forest where they can walk and talk unmolested.
"It still feels like a temporary arrangement,” Luna said dreamily, releasing her hands to busy her own under Pansy's coat. "What will you do when Malfoy returns? My kisses are a poor substitute for his affections.”
Pansy watched the sun sink in the horizon, tracking orange and red behind the mountains.
"They aren't.”
***
"Where have you been?" Blaise asked, looking up from his homework.
"Prefect patrol."
Her patrol ended nearly an hour ago, but tonight was Luna's final night before returning to Ottery St. Catchpole to celebrate Christmas with her father. They had been snogging, quite heatedly, in one of the secret passages on the fourth floor.
Blaise picked up the indigo gloves Pansy discarded on the Common Room table, poking his fingers inside the warm down lining the left partner. He sniffed at its palm.
"Sugar Quills?" Blaise raised an eyebrow. "How plebeian, Pansy."
Minding the distance between them, she hoped with near-pathetic fervor that Luna's scent was drowned by the various pine wreathes and Exploding Mints scattered throughout the Common Room.
"Smelling holiday mints, are you?" She flashed a smile. "Good night."
The gloves would have to wait until tomorrow.
"Blaise asked me to give these to you," Millicent said the next morning, dropping the pair on Pansy's bed. "You two all right?"
She nodded. "Of course. You look nice."
Millicent smiled. Make-up added color to her square face, and she had tamed her wavy, black hair to a loose knot at the nape of her neck. In her fur-lined cloak and form-fitting two-piece robes, she looked regal, womanly. Opal earrings dripped from her earlobes.
Pansy inclined her head to be pecked on the cheek. "I'm off. Zacharias agreed to have tea with me at Madam Puddifoot's."
"Millicent, about Puddifoot’s…"
The other girl winked conspiratorially. "Don't tell Blaise."
Because she was a good friend, Pansy agreed, but not before she filed away this bit of inter-house cooperation for future use.
She was in good spirits when she settled into her favorite common room armchair, her mind on wheat-colored hair and gray eyes.
"Where'd Millicent end up going with Smith?" Blaise asked, taking the chair opposite her.
"I'd share if it was mine to share, love," she said, unscrewing an inkpot to start penning her Christmas cards. "You know I would."
Blaise picked up one of the cards, which was humming "We Wish Ye a Merry Christmas." He began sorting the envelopes, cards and seals, once in a while pointing out an inkblot or reading out loud the spelling of someone's surname from Pansy’s address book.
He was apologizing in his way. But Blaise was not and did not believe in unconditional resolutions. Whatever his intentions might be, Pansy knew that she wasn’t in the clear. This calm was subject to change.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“I never left,” she answered without glancing up, focused on perfecting each stroke of the long, sloping cursive covering half of the blank holiday card to Teddy Nott, who was vacationing in the Swiss Alps with his cousins. “Where have you been?”
“Fighting rumors that Smith and I are fighting over you,” he smirked.
Pansy rolled her eyes. “Merlin, that was bloody weird. How did that start?” She looked over his clothes. “Playing Muggle today?”
Blaise, done rearranging her cards, stretched languorously. He was sharply dressed, even for a weekend morning, in a cobalt-blue cashmere sweater and gray trousers. He twitched the square toes of his brown leather loafers for effect.
“I wear it better than they do. I don’t know how the rumors started but I’m glad yours have died down.”
“And you didn’t fan any of those flames?” She gave him a pointed look before proceeding to Greg’s greeting card. He and Vince were holidaying in Greece with the Crabbe clan.
“It didn’t benefit me in any way to do so.”
“Hah.”
“You’re chipper considering how peaky you look. You getting enough sleep?”
She wasn’t. Her studies and prefect duties exacted so much time that being with Luna meant creating a separate schedule.
“Yeah, I’m getting enough. Thanks kindly for asking.” She started on her twelfth card, to Mrs. Narcissa Malfoy, spending her Christmas at the Malfoy Estate in Wiltshire. “It’s just the N.E.W.T.S. study groups taking their toll on me. We start late, we end later.”
Blaise was staring at her with a hard ferocity intended to chip her solid alibi and expose a darker truth.
“Hannah Abbott has been looking quite gorgeous lately,” Pansy sighed dramatically, her hand over her heart. “Alas, it cannot be.”
“I thought so. You do fancy birds! What about Draco?”
“Idiot,” she chortled. “I was teasing. I love Draco, and I do not fancy girls.”
She wasn’t lying. She didn’t like girls in that way at all. Luna was a different story.
"Pansy."
"Mm?"
"You know -- I don't quite know how to phrase this -- my behavior the last few weeks, you have to understand that..." He trailed off and reddened as Pansy put aside her writing to give him her undivided attention. "Seeing as, er."
He shifted in his chair, buying time while Pansy looked on with obvious enjoyment. "Well, let's have it, then."
Blaise expelled the breath he had been holding. Glancing around to ascertain that they were alone, he went on: "I don't see how else, or when else I can say this. The timing never seems right or appropriate, and ha, ha, actually it never is. About my behavior: you know that disappointment you feel when you discover that the person you’d admired for some time wasn’t as perfect as you thought they’d be? And that you've been the one at fault all along for fucking seeing them that way? Well, it's been like that for me -- my mum, my favorite Macnair cousin, Draco...You. You, falling apart."
Pansy nodded slowly, her mind working fast to piece all this together.
"I didn't like seeing you fall to pieces. But I liked that I was there to see it. I thought it would make things more bearable for me, to see you like that. It didn't. It made things worse, worse for me, because -- " He reached across the table to take her hands, touching his forehead to her palm with careful obeisance.
"Zabini, what the bloody hell are you talking about?"
"Draco is a lucky, lucky bastard."
She tried to pull her hands away, but he held on.
"You stupid bint, don't make me say it," he half-pleaded, half-barked. "I love you. I love you more than I thought possible. I've always loved you. And, er, not knowing what lies ahead after Hogwarts -- ah, if you can't say it at Christmas, when else can you?"
***
"That was quite a declaration," Luna mused.
It was New Years Eve Day. She and Pansy were in the Room of Requirement, which was this time Transfigured as a sunroom. One of its illusions included a wall entirely made of glass, overlooking a sun-drenched winter land. Even the enchanted Forbidden Forest looked inviting, dressed in ice and light. The real thing was gloomy, gray and cold in the perpetual shadow of a mountain and mutant trees.
"It was flattering." Pansy flicked her gaze up to meet the other girl's, who was cradling her head on her lap. Their hands were interlaced; Luna's free right hand wound its way through Pansy's dark hair, scratching her scalp as her fingers ran their course through the slippery black strands.
"Another person throwing their love at you," Luna remarked, "what else is new in Pansy Parkinson's world?"
Pansy worked her free hand under Luna's shirt, untucking the girl’s shirttails to splay her hand across the small of her back.
"You," she answered. "You're developing a smart mouth, Lovegood."
"Must be what happens when a Ravenclaw and Slytherin spend too much time together. Our natural aptitude for learning is awash when the instructor's a Slytherin. A prefect on top of that? Goodness, I don't want to get points deducted from my House. My roommates have just quit nicking my stuff."
Pansy could admit without shame that it would hurt to leave her when Draco returned. What Draco offered in passion and ambition, Luna matched with wide-eyed wonder.
"I wasn’t that fond of Lisa to begin with," Pansy drawled.
"I'd hate to be your friend."
"Mm. I treat you a hell of a lot better than most, and you know it." Pansy tugged at the nearest lock of blonde hair dangling by her face. "Kiss me already."
Luna obliged her one on the tip of Pansy's nose. And then moved to her bellybutton.
"Oy!" Pansy giggled, curling up and rolling off Luna's stomach. "No fair." She reached around to pinch Luna's waist.
They were in the middle of a ticklefight, when the alarms sounded.
Luna disentangled herself from Pansy's skirt, panting and clutching shut the top three buttons of her blouse. The great pounding of many, many frantic feet echoed hollowly, but was drowned out by the escalating screech of a siren no one had heard since Grindelwald's time.
"What is that?" Luna said, scrambling to search for her shoes.
Pansy already had her wand out. "The castle's been breached. This alarm only sounds when a Dark artifact, wizard or creature penetrates Hogwarts’ wards."
Panic was rising in her throat. The door leading to the corridor was distorting, melting with the stone along with the artificial trappings of the sunroom. Like a Chocolate Frog card hologram, its many manifestations winked in and out of sight: the study room, D.A. headquarters, an endless storeroom of curios, a red-marble lavatory, a veil-festooned bedroom, a ballroom, a green glen, a star-studded sky, a mossy Roman-style sewer. Pansy fleetingly wondered how these rooms had been of service to the few students who knew of its existence. A place of refuge, yes, she thought, grabbing Luna by the sleeve of her robes.
A place of quiet, a place of secrets.
"The wall!"
The wall once made of glass was now rough stone masonry. With slow, painful effort, the nooks yawned open, pushing aside stone not moved for millennia. A plane of black wood wedged itself through, pushing itself like a mismatched peg through an ill-fitting hole. It began to splinter, raining curls of varnish and wood, grinding horribly, dryly until a beat-up wardrobe toppled on the floor.
Another room was creating itself in the Room of Requirement. With a sick drop in her stomach, Pansy recognized the cabinet, the slumbering manticores and flying unicorns carved on its double doors glowing green. She wondered if the jewelry box hidden in her bureau in the sub-dungeons glowed with the same intensity.
She grabbed Luna by the elbow, pulling her close, and racing against seconds.
"I'm so bad at goodbyes," Pansy babbled. "I fall to pieces and I never know, I never know how..."
Luna folded easily in her arms. The kiss was clumsy, hard, the way it should have been their first time. Their teeth ground together, and when she tasted blood, Pansy fisted her free left hand in Luna's light hair.
"Go!" she pushed Luna away, swung open the shrinking door and shoved her out, causing her to stumble backward into the gaggle of panicking students. Her mouth, red with blood and lipstick, hung open as her eyes locked on the cabinet behind Pansy. Students were running in the halls, blinded by the flash of warning light, bat-like in their black robes. "Go!"
She slammed the door shut.
The wardrobe was open.
"Pansy," Draco Malfoy said, stepping out, his handsome, pointy face triumphant despite the riot outside the room and inside her heart. "Pansy, I've come..."
Pairing: Pansy/Luna, with a touch of Pansy/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Her kisses were not a poor substitute at all.
Notes: My first hand at femmelash. Many thanks to wheatgerm for her thorough beta skills.
Crushed, Part 2 Part 1
"I don't think he'll make it." Blaise Zabini winced as one of Slytherin team's new Chasers dropped a Quaffle on Greg Goyle's head. "Greg would not let him out of the locker room without an arse-kicking."
"He's got brawn, that's for sure, our little Adam Pucey," Pansy answered. "He might make it yet."
"Let's hope he uses that troll-like strength of his against Gryffindor."
The late October cold snap did little to deter the Slytherin team from booking the Quidditch pitch for five consecutive days of practice. Pansy thought the other Houses had little reason to be surprised; Slytherin always made it a point to usurp the field before each game. The wind-chapped team had another motivation: they were playing Gryffindor in the season opener.
"I'm glad you came out, Pansy." Blaise kept his eyes ahead, on the dumpy flying figure of Vince Crabbe and the thickening cotton-wool clouds moving across a quicksilver sky.
The shadow they cast on the pitch turned the neatly trimmed grass of the pitch from emerald to murky algae. It was almost as dark as the green of Pansy's eyes. "The shade of absinthe," her mother described them. Pansy was content to call it something else: “just green.”
"You know I like Quidditch," she said, rearranging the scarf around her neck. Her ears stung from the chill.
"True. I thought this might be a little hard for you. You didn't come to the Quidditch trials early in September."
She hadn't. Watching tryouts had become their tradition since Draco won his Seeker title five years ago. The ritual, like many other events in Pansy's years at Hogwarts, was embedded with memories of him.
"I'm not one to break tradition," she said.
"Speaking of traditions -- ow!" Blaise jumped to his feet to wave down Vince. "Mate, you have got to tell your new Chaser to quit defending the hoops. It's not his job!" Pucey was indeed hovering by the hoops.
"Speaking of traditions?" Pansy prodded, wishing to take the heat off the third year student. They needed all the luck they could get this year. The Gryffindor beaters had come a long way, and it was almost certain that Ginny Weasley would succeed Potter as Seeker.
"Hogsmeade weekend's coming up," Blaise answered, resuming his seat. Like Draco, he was tall and had to fold his long legs into the meager space between their seats and the backrests of the row below them. "Will you come?"
Since this was their last year, her friends had come to linger over each time marker -- from Quidditch trials to the ever-intimidating N.E.W.T.S in June -- with uncharacteristic sentimentality.
"Yeah, I'll come." Pansy waved at Millicent Bulstrode and Daphne Greengrass, watching them take their seats nearest to the pitch. Millicent hated heights.
They would be an odd number: Vince, Greg, Blaise, Millicent, herself.
As if hearing her thoughts, Blaise reached around to squeeze her shoulder. "We'll drink to Draco."
"It's a bit weird, isn't it," she said, her eyes fixed on the intricate knit of her violet scarf. "There'll be no more 'first game of the season' with Gryffindor next year."
"Yeah. But there will be bigger things out there, too."
"We just won't be doing them together." Pansy was seized with an irrational sense of foreboding. If she had ever found Hogwarts stifling with its regimented student life, she suddenly found the world outside it dizzyingly large.
"Oh, we'll be in touch, I'm sure." Only pride and pedigree could prevent Blaise from expressing uncertainty. "I know we will."
Many of them, save for Millicent, were without siblings. They had come to regard their circle as more than schoolmates; they had adopted each other as brothers and sisters.
"I hope so. Where will you be, what will you do?" She watched Millicent and Daphne flail their scarves wildly like standards as Greg and Vince artfully smacked two Bludgers. They sailed past each other like intersecting comets.
"Mum wants me to return to Florence to settle matters with my father's estate. It's been bequeathed to me. I become its lord when I turn 18."
"So, a life of lazing about for our Blaise," Pansy said, smiling a little. "I suppose I'll continue to be filthy rich." She tossed her dark hair for dramatic effect. Blaise laughed. "I'd like to work with my mother's friend, you know...the one who made that pink gown for me for the Yule Ball?"
"A fashionista, hm? How very glamorous. I envision a future for Greg and Vince as bouncers for some London dance club."
It was Pansy's turn to laugh. "You've got it wrong. Greg will carry on the family trade of selling arms."
"I suppose Vince shall have a good cry every night before bed, then. No Greggy-poo to snuggle with."
"He'll just have more time to pine silently for Millicent."
"Ah. Yes. So very manly, that pining away stuff."
"Of course you'll never understand," Pansy sniffed, "being every girl's object of affection. Say, if Ginny Weasley wasn't a Gryffindor, would you have asked her for tea at Madam Puddifoot's?"
Blaise squinted his eyes. "No. She will still be a Weasley. Also, I loathe Puddifoot's, it's for gauche people. Besides, friends don't let friends incur the secret mockery of others by allowing them to take their tea there."
***
"Madam Puddifoot's," Luna answered, pushing her hands into mismatched woolen mittens.
The sky gave a threatening rumble as angry pot-bellied clouds moved sluggishly across the horizon. An icy wind whistled through the naked trees, rustling up the last of the fallen leaves. The growing crowd of Hogsmeade-bound students seemed to bunch tighter as they queued up before Filch and Professor Flitwick with their permission slips.
Pansy eyed the gloves from the corner of her eye: one was a bright periwinkle blue, its partner a yellow-and-red striped number with two interlinked "CC"s on them.
"That's not a good place," she said. "Those gloves are hideous, Luna."
Pansy made no effort to conceal her developing friendship with Luna Lovegood, nor did she waste the time publicizing it. Inter-house friendships were not unusual, but she could do without accusations of false allegiances. Luna, for her part, acted the way she always did: with a complete lack of self-awareness. She just seemed content to have a friend.
"I lost their partners," Luna said, standing on tiptoes to see above the crowd. To the undiscerning eye, they were two students with undeterminable familiarity. "I like Madam Puddifoot's."
"It’s for sappy couples.”
"Is it?" Her eyes widened in profile. "I never knew that."
"Luna," Pansy whispered, teasing. "You knew that."
Luna's cheek dimpled in an embarrassed smile. "Puddifoot's has lovely people."
"So does The Three Broomsticks."
Pansy was pleased to see her enter the pub later that afternoon, pink-faced from the chill outside. The merriment indoors compensated for the overcrowding and delayed service. There was not a table or booth that wasn’t crammed with students and adult patrons, whose animated conversations were punctuated with laughter and calls for more drink across the room. Madam Rosmerta herself sat with two jolly-looking uniformed officials.
The tickling buzz of the Butterbeer faded Pansy's surroundings to a haze of sound and color, where the only lucid point was watching Luna squeeze herself between tables to seat herself with Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom.
"Bad mood?" Millicent said, pushing a Butterbeer toward her.
"No," Pansy said, tipping back the small tankard into her open mouth. Luna's wide eyes lit up when they caught sight of her. "Do I look good?" she asked no one in particular, feeling goofily self-conscious.
Blaise swallowed a burp. "No," he answered, obviously moved by the Butterbeer; his fifth, to be exact. "You look amazing."
"I fancy you, Zacharias!" Millicent crowed at the passing Hufflepuff, who looked both frightened and flattered by the attention. Everyone within hearing distance of the declaration laughed uproariously.
Vince looked peeved, and would have chased after Smith with a barstool, had Greg not vomited all over his lap. The stench of Ogden's firewhiskey mingled with the candy-sweet scent of Butterbeer and Millicent's melting ice cream.
Pansy lifted her half-full tankard in Luna's direction. She could almost glimpse her dimples across the room. The remaining Butterbeer slid down her throat like a river of thick honey, with a sweetness that came not just from taste but also from the act itself. Pansy pushed back her fringe. She felt as though she was drowning.
When she looked up, Luna was still there, her smoke-gray eyes watchful.
***
A crate of Butterbeers and half a bottle of Odgen's later, Pansy and Millicent tipsily made their way to Bettina's Bewitching Boutique to clear their heads and browse for early Christmas presents.
Millicent, quickly sobering, was distraught. "He knows and he hates me," she groaned, absently stroking a stack of chartreuse scarves. "My image! Why didn't you stop me?"
Pansy turned away from a full-body display mirror, in front of which she was straightening her hair. "We would've, but you then you leapt over the table and tried to snog him."
Millicent was aghast. "You can't see it, but a little bit of me just died inside. Tell me why I shouldn't drown myself in the Black Lake right now. Go on."
"Because there was no leaping snog," Pansy answered, biting the insides of her cheeks. "Look, just...play it cool on Monday."
Millicent grumbled and disappeared behind a rack of silk robes.
"It wasn't that bad, Millicent. Honest."
"Unrequited love sucks."
She sounded so miserable that Pansy had to hug her. Of course, Millicent was so tall and broad that the gesture itself proved somewhat of a challenge.
"Er?" Zacharias Smith stood at the entrance of the shop, frozen with indecision. He looked out of place in the boudoir-themed shop, dressed in garish Hufflepuff colors and a common scarf.
"Bugger off, Smith," Pansy cheerfully called out. "We're in the middle of plotting how to next confuse you. I think I shall fall in love with you next."
Zacharias harrumphed and -- interestingly -- reluctantly exited, running headlong into a startled Luna Lovegood. Outside, he was greeted by the hiss of falling rain. Over his shoulder, Pansy could see students rushing inside warmly lit shops or seeking refuge under their awnings. Even The Hog's Head, adjacent to Bettina's, was packed to the rafters.
"Oh!" Luna exclaimed, steadying herself. Her face, Pansy noticed, was lightly beaded with rainwater. A part of her -- the same part that had observed Luna at The Three Broomsticks with queer awareness -- simmered with unexplained yearning. She knew, even with her eyes closed, the lay of the freckles dotting the bridge of that nose, how wetness dotted them now, and the waves of fair hair that framed her face.
Was she soft, as soft as she looked?
Pansy flushed.
"Hello," Luna said, noncommittal and undisturbed by the weather outside. Lightning flashed, electrifying the beveled windows of the shop. Pansy dazedly wondered if this was what it was like to be inside a star.
"Hi."
Luna made her way toward the back.
"Should I talk to him?" Millicent murmured, lost in deliberation. "Yeah. I'm going to talk to him."
She squared her broad shoulders and stepped out into the storm. The shop's front entrance doors slapped shut.
Pansy watched Millicent's departing figure until it disappeared in the slanting gray of the storm.
Slowly, she made her way to the back of the shop.
***
The box was cherry wood, a rich, dark brown carved with reliefs of slumbering manticores and flying unicorns. The lid, fastened with an ornate silver catch, flipped open to reveal an interior lined with silver silk.
Inside was a pair of gloves, midnight-blue and permanently charmed with a Warming spell.
To think is to dream, and to dream is to think.
Of you.
D
"When?" Pansy heard herself ask the puzzled shopkeeper, a Miss Desdemona Doyle, who worried a square of a monogrammed kerchief between her hands.
Talking to Luna had lost its importance. She was as peripheral as the carpeted floor and a tray of sewing pins.
"This morning," the woman stammered, paling. "Please don't ask me any more, Miss Parkinson."
Pansy mumbled a perfunctory "thank you" before turning on her heels, snatching random robes and dresses en route to the shop's farthest dressing room.
In the privacy of the pink-lit room, Pansy sank in a heap of silks and satin, the box clutched to her chest, bowed over it as though it was a living, precious thing. She felt like a bell, struck and still feeling the presence of a long-departed stimulus.
If her heart had been heavy before, it was made weightless now, trembling with a bittersweet revelation. This sense of fragility frightened her. The storm outside was nothing compared to the tempest she was feeling. Her tears were salty-sweet in her mouth, a mixture of familiar sorrow and Butterbeer.
"Pansy...?"
"No."
She burst out of the dressing room, past Luna and out into the rain and empty street, immediately shocked by the onslaught of wind and water. Even the lights of the shops seemed to dim, a protective gesture to preserve the gaiety they housed.
Was she the bearer of good news? Joy and sadness warred inside her as she ran door-to-door, tracing the divergent veins of Hogsmeade until they converged near the dour-looking Shrieking Shack. Her hair lashed across her cheeks and exposed neck; mud caked her legs, and her soaked clothes hung on her body like an aggrieved specter.
Blaise saw her first.
"Merlin's balls," he gasped, snapping out of his inebriation -- he and the boys were sipping Kamehameha's Beer Brew -- when she crashed into The Three Broomsticks, sharp-eyed but dumb, feverish but alert with news. She was dimly aware of the kerfluffle she caused, but she didn't care.
"He's still alive," she breathed into Blaise's ear. He wrapped his cloak around her shaking shoulders, pulling her away from sight and into the boys' darkened booth "Here, he's still alive. Quick, boys, order another round. Let's drink...Let's drink to..."
And then, there was only darkness.
***
"Awake, I see," Madam Pomfrey said, peering at her. The nurse faded into the darkness of sleep, her tut-tutting a whisper in the murky landscape of Pansy's dreams.
--
Blaise was next. He looked disheveled, a dark, disgruntled jungle cat. "Pansy feeling sour?"
Pansy rolled to her left and heaved helplessly on to the immaculate floor before passing out.
--
All of Slytherin House seemed to have packed itself into the confines of her infirmary room. No one was listening to Madam Pomfrey, who could barely be heard above the din of well-meaning wishes.
"Eat." Millicent pressed a cool hand against Pansy's sweaty forehead. "Blimey, what kind of plague did you contract?"
Pansy reached for a slice of toast and managed to cram a bite inside her mouth. It tasted like dry parchment, but it was better than the bile coating her tongue.
--
Ginny Weasley was glaring at her. "Luna asked me to look in on you."
Pansy tapped into an unknown reserve of strength to roll her eyes. "Fuck you and your noble fucking heart, Weasley."
She fell asleep.
--
Crabbe and Goyle were singing a terrible rendition of "Good King Wenceslas," and attempting to substitute lyrics they didn't know with bawdy commentary on Hufflepuff girls and Neville Longbottom.
"Draco's all right, he's alive and well," Pansy croaked. "But your song is so damned awful."
She drifted off to the sound of their surprised chuckles.
--
"You don't really fancy me, do you?" Zacharias Smith hovered awkwardly by her bedside, a bouquet of sagging pansies in his arms. He wore Millicent's favourite sky blue sweater and had combed his blond hair away from his face. He gazed at Pansy with unmistakable hunger.
"No, Smith!" Pansy said, alarmed, tugging the flannel covers up to her chin. "Good God, no...Say. What d'you think of Millicent Bulstrode?"
"Um..."
The pull of sleep proved too powerful. Pansy never heard his answer.
--
"I'm sorry I asked Ginny," Luna was saying. She was kneeling on the cold, stone floor, so that they were eye-to-eye. Her chin rested on the backs of her palms, which were, in turn, splayed flat on the cot's flannel blanket. She was backlit by candlelight, as ghost-like as she was the night all this started. "Is there anything I can do?"
"You," Pansy answered, brushing her mouth across the pointed tips of Luna's fingers, winning over temptation by ignoring the girl's bottom lip. She felt instantly guilty.
She cried herself to sleep.
***
"Four days. You were so very ill for four days," Blaise said, examining Pansy's new gloves with an appraising eye. "These are very nice."
"I wish I had thrown up on Ginny Weasley instead of you," Pansy said.
"Technically, you didn't throw up on me. Just...in the general direction of my favorite loafers."
Pansy reached for the gloves and tugged them on. With them on, her hands looked quite small.
When she felt well enough to walk, she and Blaise made their way to Greenhouse Five, where Pansy could catch up on missed assignments. She felt him watching her as she clipped purring shrubs and stroked biting flowers.
The first snow fell that afternoon. They watched the flakes drift, dusting the school like fine sugar until the mountains and the environs of the castle resembled something out of a fairytale story.
"I'm not one to judge, Pansy," Blaise began, breaking the silence with his quiet baritone voice. "But I know you and Lovegood have become quite...friendly this term. You’ve been keeping the others from pranking her. I wonder, what sort of things is she doing for you?"
Pansy continued to watch the snow collect in the grooves and angles of the glass planes, framing Hogwarts with the haziness of a dream. In her mind, she could see Luna's blonde hair and her mismatched mittens. Her hands curled inside Draco's gloves.
"Are you...?" Pansy could see Blaise's reflection bite his lip with uncertainty. "Do you fancy girls?"
"Have I ever fancied girls?"
Blaise reached over her shoulders to touch her hands, now both pressed open-palmed against a windowpane. He touched the soft leather, stroking them with contemplative slowness, all the while resting his chin on top of her head. So many girls would sell their eyeteeth for a moment of such intimacy, platonic or romantic, with him. For some reason, her mind flashed back to their train ride to school during sixth year, which she spent running her fingers through Draco's hair as Blaise smirked over an unshared, personal joke.
She never cared to ask.
Pansy wondered how they must look like to outsiders now -- Slytherin's Lothario cocooning Slytherin's resident princess.
Or shrew, depending on whom you asked.
"I had no idea you two were so close," he said.
"I had no idea this would even be an issue."
Blaise gave her trapped hands a slight squeeze. "Oh, I believe you were well-aware it would be. Are you fraternizing with --"
"-- the enemy?" Pansy finished for him, feeling her hackles rise. "What a terrible thing to say."
He lowered his mouth to her ear. In such close proximity, Pansy could smell the cinnamon in his breath and the distinct, spiciness of his cologne. His lashes lowered with dangerous coquetry.
"I’m only looking out for your best interests. Lovegood has already picked her side. The last we need is for you to defect. I may know nothing about the bonds of friendship between girls, but what I've been seeing looks like something else."
"You really need to get laid, Zabini."
"I'm not judging --"
She swiveled in the circle of his arms. "Oh, but you are. Don't lie."
"Draco?"
"He'll come home," she answered. To think is to dream, and to dream is to think. Of you. "His letter indicated that and everything more. You best release me, Blaise. People might start talking."
***
"People are talking," Luna said.
Pansy glanced up from her Herbology homework. They were in the Room of Requirement, presently transformed into a study complete with a roaring fireplace.
"Oh?"
"That you, Blaise Zabini and Zacharias Smith are involved in a torrid three-way affair."
Pansy snorted. It had been days since the greenhouse conversation with Blaise, and while they had attributed that strange night to the commotion surrounding Draco’s letter and her illness, their recent exchanges had been cordial but no longer as friendly. What appeared to be a hopeful sign of Draco's well-being -- "He must be all right," Vince had said, "to send Pansy gloves and a handwritten letter" - was their neutral ground.
Blaise made no more mention of Luna, though Pansy suspected on his part, some yet-to-be unleashed test of her fidelity. Her hand crept inside her robes to touch Draco's letter, folded and already worn from repeated readings.
"They're also saying that I've seduced you," Luna continued, chewing on her Sugar Quill.
Pansy stretched. "How silly."
She returned to her essay.
"Zabini fancies you, you know," she said after a length of time. "It must be agony for him, to love his best mate's girl."
Pansy shifted uncomfortably. Considering Blaise in that light was an alien and disturbing concept she didn't care to visit.
"It happens a lot. Roger Davies and Cedric Diggory both fancied Cho Chang, and that's way before Harry -- before Harry entered the picture."
She grew silent, her eyes distant with memory. Pansy watched her with mild irritation.
"Miss him, do you?" she asked, the prickliness of her delivery surprising even her. She rarely thought about Potter and his hangers-on unless she had to.
"More than Ronald," Luna said, in that unguarded way of hers. "He belongs to Hermione anyway," she said by way of consolation. "Harry is..."
Pansy abandoned her homework. Praising Potter had practically been quotidian reflex in all his years at Hogwarts. The school’s patron saint since he was eleven, the Boy Who Lived commanded both doubt and adulation -- as all living legends do. But to hear of him from so close a confidant ... The Slytherin in her saw no duplicity in this; only a Machiavellian appreciation of the rewards often yielded by unconventional friendships.
"Potter is what?" Pansy prompted.
"Alone." Something like pain flickered in her eyes. "Fighting the good fight."
The poetic injustice was too much. Of course, life always been unfair to Potter, poor green-eyed Potter growing up in a cupboard surrounded by disgusting Muggles. But fortune has smiled upon him too, given him so many blessings that make the most mistreated martyr in heaven blush with shame.
Potter had been blessed with countless lives, each of which he seemed eager to throw away. People like Draco weren't so lucky.
"Oh, I don't know about that," Pansy said coldly. "He has an adoring public and Ginny Weasley, a princess waiting for his homecoming."
"We're all waiting," Luna pointed out.
Pansy pushed back her chair, and, feeling very much like Blaise, dramatically swiped at the spread of parchment, quills and books laid out on the desk. It accomplished nothing but ruin an hour's worth of homework.
She began to pace the length of the room. The enchanted fire in the hearth hissed and flared as she stalked to and fro before its mouth.
"Waiting," she spat, unable to look at Luna, who sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor. "We're all waiting. That's all we could do."
It was a struggle to translate her thoughts into words, torn between self-censorship -- a Slytherin never reveals a secret without a fair exchange -- and a deep-seated need to confide freely, to purge herself of doubt and angst that had accumulated for months in the growing disquiet of her mind. It had become an animal, roiling inside her like a trapped beast scrabbling for release. Patience had never been her virtue, but she had had to learn it, to strive for it, in order to better understand what was being asked of her.
To wait. To remain here in body, but chase after Draco with the ghost of her good intentions. It was a helpless way to love, and she wondered, for the first time, finally meeting Luna's silvery eyes, if their immature ardor could withstand his savage passage to manhood and her girlish expectations.
"What, no words of insight from you?" She advanced toward Luna. "No clever observations? Care to share any universal truths?"
Luna stayed quiet, but there was something in her eyes Pansy could almost feel.
A retreat. Not you, too.
And it was more than she could take. Luna's unsolicited honesty had a tendency to enrage her, but they had never been offered with malice. She had a way of removing Pansy from the isolation of her sorrow, by distraction or by initiating her to a wider, shared experience, that she wasn't alone -- and Pansy hated her a little for that, too, for turning a pain she thought unique so very common.
"You'll never understand," Pansy said, "how it feels like to be left behind."
"No," Luna said slowly, unfolding her legs to stand until she and Pansy were face to face. The bitterness in her eyes cut Pansy to her core. "You can never understand, because you've always been loved. You are surrounded by it, you are drowning in it. You're so greedy, Parkinson, for demanding so much of it!"
Pansy was stunned silent.
"What is sacrifice to you?" Luna continued, advancing while Pansy backtracked until she was pressed against her desk. A chair stood between them. "An illness, heartbreak, separation? You’re so fragile, so selfish."
"If it's Potter you're harping on ab --"
"It's not about Harry! It's never always about Harry or Malfoy or what you feel!”
But Pansy had already guessed her secret, haphazardly hidden by an off-putting persona and the flinch at the mention of Potter’s name -- that she loved Harry Potter with the silent, steady deepness of one who understood his mysteries but could never share them.
Never had Pansy loathed him so much. Potter, whose rejection consumed Draco for years. Potter, whose very survival came at the cost of so many lives of her Death Eater family. Potter, who was loved by blood traitors and Mudbloods and Luna Lovegood.
"You love Potter," Pansy said. "Oh, my God. You do."
"What, you want mine, too? Unbelievable!"
"Is it too good for me now? Don't think I deserve it, do you?"
"You think nothing can ever be too good for you!"
"At least you're close enough to reality to see that!"
"You make it sound like we all ought to worship you!” Luna began to push the chair away with her left hand, and it was plain to see by the tight sharpness of her _expression that Pansy’s outburst would not pass as easily as her casually cruel remarks about Parvati Patil’s gaudy hairclips, the haplessness of Hogwarts’ house elves and Luna’s lack of social grace.
"You make it sound like your life is a pity party." Pansy attempted to sidestep but Luna’s hands had braced her at the spot.
"You live yours like one."
"Oh. Oh, shut up."
She released Pansy. But the steel in her eyes made it plain that this was not an act of defeat. What was important and frivolous to Luna Lovegood was a conundrum. "Malfoy's going to come home, you know," she said.
It was, to Pansy's mind, as good as concession as she was going to get. She reached out to pat Luna's cheek, her fingers stopping at the plane of her cheekbones. Her skin was hot to the touch, incongruous to Luna’s icy coloring. Without thinking, Pansy pressed a kiss to the girl’s cheek.
Slytherins never apologize. "Unless it's to the Dark Lord or your mother," Draco once said. The crack had made Millicent laugh so hard that she squirted pumpkin juice out of her left nostril.
Pansy, remembering that day during fifth year, smiled into the kiss. Luna didn't pull away.
She just tilted her head to catch Pansy's mouth in hers.
Soft. She was soft, as soft as she looked. Pansy leaned into the kiss, her stomach fluttering with the near-painful exhilaration that came with stumbling into unfamiliar but not necessarily unpleasant territory. But she had crossed the line before the kiss, before The Three Broomsticks, before she began intimidating Orla and her Ravenclaw friends into returning Luna’s stolen belongings.
How long had she been standing on the other side of the line?
"Other side?" Luna murmured against Pansy's lips, releasing a puff of breath scented with the aftertaste of Sugar Quills.
"Your head," Pansy said huskily, leaning into Luna’s open mouth, eager to take advantage of her bewilderment, "slant it to the side."
She bowed forward when it seemed like Luna was about to pull away, but it was only to -- nervously, Pansy saw between half-lidded eyes -- shove away the chair separating them. Pansy reached around to pull her closer, her small hands spanning the other girl's waist. She felt the tips of Luna's waist-length hair tickle the backs of her palms.
"I think..." Luna stepped closer. Her hands, shaking, found their place on Pansy's shoulders. She shivered when Pansy gave her upper lip an experimental lick.
"You think what, Lovegood," Pansy softly, but not unkindly, jeered. Growing more courageous, she pushed the tip of her tongue between Luna's parted lips to dart in greedily, her heart pounding with something that had nothing to do with feeling good about doing something she wasn't supposed to, but sheer, sheer pleasure. Luna gasped when Pansy pulled her closer, tighter against her breasts.
Braver now, Pansy broke off the kiss to gauge a reaction. Luna touched her mouth, swollen and stained dark by lipstick and the pressure of several kisses.
She didn't resist when Pansy swooped in again to nip at her bottom lip. Her hands ran over a landscape of new curves, her senses thrilling that something she deemed unremarkable on herself could be the opposite on someone as unexpected as Luna Lovegood.
Pansy's hands found their way to the nape of Luna's neck, and then to the curves of her jaw and chin. Emboldened by her advances, Luna allowed her hands to venture past Pansy's shoulders, caressing the exposed skin of her throat before sliding down her sides to rest on her hips.
"Oh." Pansy tipped her head back as Luna, shy but determined, teased the juncture of her earlobe and jaw. Under her robes, her body exploded in goose pimples.
"Oh," she tugged Luna closer, "oh, where did you learn that?"
She felt Luna smile against her neck.
***
The weeks leading up to Christmas flew in a flurry of exams, study groups, prefect holiday duties, and a Quidditch game against Hufflepuff that put Slytherin ahead of the House Cup running by a good one hundred fifty points.
"Watch your step, Weasley," Pansy sneered, elbowing Ginny Weasley as they passed each other in the crowded Charms corridor.
Behind her, Blaise, Millicent, Vince and Greg sniggered appreciatively.
"Guess your shoulders aren't broad enough to carry Gryffindor," Millicent snickered. "Your arse is another story, though."
Weasley broke away from Longbottom to fight through throngs of students, her eyes spitting fire and her mouth working its way through several choice words. Pansy stopped her short with her wand. Its tip glowed violet with a ready Bat Bogey Hex.
"Tsk, tsk, Weasley," she said, with an arrogant toss of her hair. "Fancy twenty points from Gryffindor?"
"I wish you wouldn't give my friends such a hard time," Luna said the weekend before Christmas holiday.
They were atop the Astronomy Tower looking down at the frozen surface of the Black Lake, glittering wetly like an island of hard obsidian in a sea of alabaster.
Pansy drew back from Luna's neck. "I wish they wouldn't give mine hell."
It was an area of contention, and had been since Longbottom nearly caught them snogging in the Trophy Room. Blaise, still suspicious and more disapproving than a Malfoy elder, had openly accused Luna of everything short of being the next Dark Lord.
"She doesn't deserve that sort of honor, the blood traitor," he commented snidely, before Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan jumped him from behind, nearly breaking their backs as they toppled off the moving fourth-floor staircase before it connected to an adjacent landing. Fortunately for the three, they crashed onto a swinging third-floor staircase.
"Luna," Pansy said, moving in to trap her between an immobilized telescope and her own body, "my courtesies extend only to you.”
Luna grasped Pansy's gloved hands, pulling them behind her back in her embrace. "Slytherins really draw their lines, don't they?"
"We stand firm, yes."
They kissed.
In actuality, drawing lines between Houses was easy compared to defining what they had. The rituals of day-to-day living were constantly under negotiation. Pansy wasn't allowed to hex Longbottom as long as Luna kept Ginny from pranking Blaise, and they'd agreed never to discuss Daily Prophet articles and The Quibbler's series on rare beast sightings, nor hide copies of either from each other. It was new, generally frustrating and neither knew where they were headed.
It was far and away from love, and, for Pansy, who continued to maintain that the perplexing lust Luna inspired had little to do with replacing or loving Draco any less. She was certain the strength of her love would outlast her liaison with Luna, even if her fidelity had not.
Nevertheless, the ghost of Draco’s promises visited Pansy in the hours between the spare minutes she spent pressing Luna up against the Restricted Section’s darkest corners; the breathless, clumsy touches under the Quidditch stands; and the early Saturday mornings spent at the edge of the Forbidden Forest where they can walk and talk unmolested.
"It still feels like a temporary arrangement,” Luna said dreamily, releasing her hands to busy her own under Pansy's coat. "What will you do when Malfoy returns? My kisses are a poor substitute for his affections.”
Pansy watched the sun sink in the horizon, tracking orange and red behind the mountains.
"They aren't.”
***
"Where have you been?" Blaise asked, looking up from his homework.
"Prefect patrol."
Her patrol ended nearly an hour ago, but tonight was Luna's final night before returning to Ottery St. Catchpole to celebrate Christmas with her father. They had been snogging, quite heatedly, in one of the secret passages on the fourth floor.
Blaise picked up the indigo gloves Pansy discarded on the Common Room table, poking his fingers inside the warm down lining the left partner. He sniffed at its palm.
"Sugar Quills?" Blaise raised an eyebrow. "How plebeian, Pansy."
Minding the distance between them, she hoped with near-pathetic fervor that Luna's scent was drowned by the various pine wreathes and Exploding Mints scattered throughout the Common Room.
"Smelling holiday mints, are you?" She flashed a smile. "Good night."
The gloves would have to wait until tomorrow.
"Blaise asked me to give these to you," Millicent said the next morning, dropping the pair on Pansy's bed. "You two all right?"
She nodded. "Of course. You look nice."
Millicent smiled. Make-up added color to her square face, and she had tamed her wavy, black hair to a loose knot at the nape of her neck. In her fur-lined cloak and form-fitting two-piece robes, she looked regal, womanly. Opal earrings dripped from her earlobes.
Pansy inclined her head to be pecked on the cheek. "I'm off. Zacharias agreed to have tea with me at Madam Puddifoot's."
"Millicent, about Puddifoot’s…"
The other girl winked conspiratorially. "Don't tell Blaise."
Because she was a good friend, Pansy agreed, but not before she filed away this bit of inter-house cooperation for future use.
She was in good spirits when she settled into her favorite common room armchair, her mind on wheat-colored hair and gray eyes.
"Where'd Millicent end up going with Smith?" Blaise asked, taking the chair opposite her.
"I'd share if it was mine to share, love," she said, unscrewing an inkpot to start penning her Christmas cards. "You know I would."
Blaise picked up one of the cards, which was humming "We Wish Ye a Merry Christmas." He began sorting the envelopes, cards and seals, once in a while pointing out an inkblot or reading out loud the spelling of someone's surname from Pansy’s address book.
He was apologizing in his way. But Blaise was not and did not believe in unconditional resolutions. Whatever his intentions might be, Pansy knew that she wasn’t in the clear. This calm was subject to change.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“I never left,” she answered without glancing up, focused on perfecting each stroke of the long, sloping cursive covering half of the blank holiday card to Teddy Nott, who was vacationing in the Swiss Alps with his cousins. “Where have you been?”
“Fighting rumors that Smith and I are fighting over you,” he smirked.
Pansy rolled her eyes. “Merlin, that was bloody weird. How did that start?” She looked over his clothes. “Playing Muggle today?”
Blaise, done rearranging her cards, stretched languorously. He was sharply dressed, even for a weekend morning, in a cobalt-blue cashmere sweater and gray trousers. He twitched the square toes of his brown leather loafers for effect.
“I wear it better than they do. I don’t know how the rumors started but I’m glad yours have died down.”
“And you didn’t fan any of those flames?” She gave him a pointed look before proceeding to Greg’s greeting card. He and Vince were holidaying in Greece with the Crabbe clan.
“It didn’t benefit me in any way to do so.”
“Hah.”
“You’re chipper considering how peaky you look. You getting enough sleep?”
She wasn’t. Her studies and prefect duties exacted so much time that being with Luna meant creating a separate schedule.
“Yeah, I’m getting enough. Thanks kindly for asking.” She started on her twelfth card, to Mrs. Narcissa Malfoy, spending her Christmas at the Malfoy Estate in Wiltshire. “It’s just the N.E.W.T.S. study groups taking their toll on me. We start late, we end later.”
Blaise was staring at her with a hard ferocity intended to chip her solid alibi and expose a darker truth.
“Hannah Abbott has been looking quite gorgeous lately,” Pansy sighed dramatically, her hand over her heart. “Alas, it cannot be.”
“I thought so. You do fancy birds! What about Draco?”
“Idiot,” she chortled. “I was teasing. I love Draco, and I do not fancy girls.”
She wasn’t lying. She didn’t like girls in that way at all. Luna was a different story.
"Pansy."
"Mm?"
"You know -- I don't quite know how to phrase this -- my behavior the last few weeks, you have to understand that..." He trailed off and reddened as Pansy put aside her writing to give him her undivided attention. "Seeing as, er."
He shifted in his chair, buying time while Pansy looked on with obvious enjoyment. "Well, let's have it, then."
Blaise expelled the breath he had been holding. Glancing around to ascertain that they were alone, he went on: "I don't see how else, or when else I can say this. The timing never seems right or appropriate, and ha, ha, actually it never is. About my behavior: you know that disappointment you feel when you discover that the person you’d admired for some time wasn’t as perfect as you thought they’d be? And that you've been the one at fault all along for fucking seeing them that way? Well, it's been like that for me -- my mum, my favorite Macnair cousin, Draco...You. You, falling apart."
Pansy nodded slowly, her mind working fast to piece all this together.
"I didn't like seeing you fall to pieces. But I liked that I was there to see it. I thought it would make things more bearable for me, to see you like that. It didn't. It made things worse, worse for me, because -- " He reached across the table to take her hands, touching his forehead to her palm with careful obeisance.
"Zabini, what the bloody hell are you talking about?"
"Draco is a lucky, lucky bastard."
She tried to pull her hands away, but he held on.
"You stupid bint, don't make me say it," he half-pleaded, half-barked. "I love you. I love you more than I thought possible. I've always loved you. And, er, not knowing what lies ahead after Hogwarts -- ah, if you can't say it at Christmas, when else can you?"
***
"That was quite a declaration," Luna mused.
It was New Years Eve Day. She and Pansy were in the Room of Requirement, which was this time Transfigured as a sunroom. One of its illusions included a wall entirely made of glass, overlooking a sun-drenched winter land. Even the enchanted Forbidden Forest looked inviting, dressed in ice and light. The real thing was gloomy, gray and cold in the perpetual shadow of a mountain and mutant trees.
"It was flattering." Pansy flicked her gaze up to meet the other girl's, who was cradling her head on her lap. Their hands were interlaced; Luna's free right hand wound its way through Pansy's dark hair, scratching her scalp as her fingers ran their course through the slippery black strands.
"Another person throwing their love at you," Luna remarked, "what else is new in Pansy Parkinson's world?"
Pansy worked her free hand under Luna's shirt, untucking the girl’s shirttails to splay her hand across the small of her back.
"You," she answered. "You're developing a smart mouth, Lovegood."
"Must be what happens when a Ravenclaw and Slytherin spend too much time together. Our natural aptitude for learning is awash when the instructor's a Slytherin. A prefect on top of that? Goodness, I don't want to get points deducted from my House. My roommates have just quit nicking my stuff."
Pansy could admit without shame that it would hurt to leave her when Draco returned. What Draco offered in passion and ambition, Luna matched with wide-eyed wonder.
"I wasn’t that fond of Lisa to begin with," Pansy drawled.
"I'd hate to be your friend."
"Mm. I treat you a hell of a lot better than most, and you know it." Pansy tugged at the nearest lock of blonde hair dangling by her face. "Kiss me already."
Luna obliged her one on the tip of Pansy's nose. And then moved to her bellybutton.
"Oy!" Pansy giggled, curling up and rolling off Luna's stomach. "No fair." She reached around to pinch Luna's waist.
They were in the middle of a ticklefight, when the alarms sounded.
Luna disentangled herself from Pansy's skirt, panting and clutching shut the top three buttons of her blouse. The great pounding of many, many frantic feet echoed hollowly, but was drowned out by the escalating screech of a siren no one had heard since Grindelwald's time.
"What is that?" Luna said, scrambling to search for her shoes.
Pansy already had her wand out. "The castle's been breached. This alarm only sounds when a Dark artifact, wizard or creature penetrates Hogwarts’ wards."
Panic was rising in her throat. The door leading to the corridor was distorting, melting with the stone along with the artificial trappings of the sunroom. Like a Chocolate Frog card hologram, its many manifestations winked in and out of sight: the study room, D.A. headquarters, an endless storeroom of curios, a red-marble lavatory, a veil-festooned bedroom, a ballroom, a green glen, a star-studded sky, a mossy Roman-style sewer. Pansy fleetingly wondered how these rooms had been of service to the few students who knew of its existence. A place of refuge, yes, she thought, grabbing Luna by the sleeve of her robes.
A place of quiet, a place of secrets.
"The wall!"
The wall once made of glass was now rough stone masonry. With slow, painful effort, the nooks yawned open, pushing aside stone not moved for millennia. A plane of black wood wedged itself through, pushing itself like a mismatched peg through an ill-fitting hole. It began to splinter, raining curls of varnish and wood, grinding horribly, dryly until a beat-up wardrobe toppled on the floor.
Another room was creating itself in the Room of Requirement. With a sick drop in her stomach, Pansy recognized the cabinet, the slumbering manticores and flying unicorns carved on its double doors glowing green. She wondered if the jewelry box hidden in her bureau in the sub-dungeons glowed with the same intensity.
She grabbed Luna by the elbow, pulling her close, and racing against seconds.
"I'm so bad at goodbyes," Pansy babbled. "I fall to pieces and I never know, I never know how..."
Luna folded easily in her arms. The kiss was clumsy, hard, the way it should have been their first time. Their teeth ground together, and when she tasted blood, Pansy fisted her free left hand in Luna's light hair.
"Go!" she pushed Luna away, swung open the shrinking door and shoved her out, causing her to stumble backward into the gaggle of panicking students. Her mouth, red with blood and lipstick, hung open as her eyes locked on the cabinet behind Pansy. Students were running in the halls, blinded by the flash of warning light, bat-like in their black robes. "Go!"
She slammed the door shut.
The wardrobe was open.
"Pansy," Draco Malfoy said, stepping out, his handsome, pointy face triumphant despite the riot outside the room and inside her heart. "Pansy, I've come..."