Round Two, Challenge Five Voting
Underneath the cut you will find the drabbles and the voting for the fifth challenge of dmpp_ldws .
Notes
- Contestants are required to vote, but must not vote for themselves (if you do, your vote will not count).
- Please take into account this weeks prompt, which was this quote: If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings. by Lisa Moriyama.
- Please vote with the number of the drabble, not the name.
eonone
Title: Pieces
Word Count: 477
Rating: PG
Warning: none
Summary: Draco has to ask Pansy a rather desperate favor.
“Auntie Pansy!”
Pansy barely made it through the front door before having her knees assaulted by two chubby arms. She grinned and hauled the blond-headed toddler into her arms; Scorpius giggled happily into her neck.
“Pansy, thank you,” she heard Draco’s voice as she entered the hall. He sounded tired. She bit back a remark about Astoria’s redecorating the place.
“Everyone else said they couldn’t take him. Daphne said she would, but she wanted to be at the hospital, too. I shouldn’t have bothered you- but she’s not getting better, and the baby...” he trailed off and Pansy nodded politely, ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach. She honestly couldn’t care less about Astoria, but she cared about the baby because it was his.
“Go. She needs you,” Pansy said, with a practiced, Pureblood smile. The words tasted bitter, like bile.
Draco returned the smile, but his was a genuine one, of relief. It stretched the dark shadows under his eyes.
“Scorpius, you be a good boy for Aunt Pansy. You do everything she tells you to, and your mother and I will be home soon.”
Scorpius’ lower lip trembled, but he nodded. “And baby?”
Draco’s face pinched. “And baby,” he said. Scorpius looked happy again, but Pansy could sense the hopelessness in Draco’s voice. They would be lucky to save Astoria. The baby- there was no hope for the baby.
Draco pulled Scorpius out of Pansy’s arms to give him a hug and a kiss. Then he caught Pansy’s hand and squeezed her fingers.
“Thanks again, Pans,” he said softly. “I mean it. I would have understood if you said no.”
Pansy shook her head. “Draco. I’ll always be here when you need me. That’s what friends are for.”
Friends. It was an absolute understatement, and they both knew it. They’d been playmates, confidantes. Lovers. They’d been everything but just friends, and now it was all they could ever be. He’d fallen in love with someone else. He’d gotten engaged, then married. Scorpius had come along, then the new baby. Every stage of what had once been Draco and Pansy had ended, quite succinctly, with every stage of what was now Draco and Astoria.
"Go,” Pansy urged again, taking the squirming Scorpius.
“I love you Pans,” Draco said, reaching for his wand. “Love you too, Scorpius. I’ll be home soon.”
“Love you,” Pansy said, too softly to be heard over the crack of Apparition.
It was a twisted little caricature of the life she’d always wanted. Holding another woman’s baby and waiting for the man of her dreams to come back to a home that wasn’t hers.
“Auntie Pansy, I’m glad you came.”
Pansy smiled. So maybe it wasn’t the life she’d wanted or expected. But it was still a life that included Draco in it. Whether they fell back together out of habit or out of love, they always fell back together. Just differently.
“I’m glad I came, too.”
terrayn
Title: The Way They Were
Word Count: 500
Rating: PG
Warning: none
Summary: When one beginning ends, another begins.
“Living every day like the last isn’t happiness. It’s fighting, living, loving too hard-until nothing remains. Sometimes…I wish we were old already. So we’d have survived all this and everything could be as uncomplicated as when we were young.”
“It was never uncomplicated,” he said.
His wife smiled, an inscrutable curl of her mouth. “Well, I’m hoping it won’t be someday. Being deliriously happy for a month then snarling for the next three-that’s not enough.”
“Don’t go,” he heard himself say.
“Stop me,” she replied with the same look of expectation of wanting more, always more, that drove him into fury-bloodshot hazes. Remembering their interminable, cratered silences, he didn’t move.
Pansy signed her name with the swiftness of compacting pain from an injury into one split second, another ‘ex’ in his column of failures.
“Only the end of a beginning. You’ve still the rest of your life,” said Mother.
“She claimed me already. Obligated to take her side or some such,” said Goyle.
“I is sorry. Mistre-former Mistress is taking all the silver,” said Verity, his one remaining house-elf.
Apparently, divorcing your wife meant divorcing everything you’d ever shared: friends, prized possessions, mementos, even Scorpius. He’d be damned if the Dark Lord wasn’t making snow angels in hell because he missed the yapping nuisance. Three hours after he’d drunkenly claimed a partiality to that name for their firstborn, Pansy handed him a newborn Corgi, the dog tag reading ‘Scorpius.’
“What?” she’d said when he glared from beneath drink-heavy eyelids. “You never specified our firstborn had to be human.”
That first night, he slept with a flask of cognac, rubbing the tan line of his ring-less ring finger, scrap metal for all it was worth now. Returning hers relegated him to “that tosser of an ex-husband” - no more wistful, whispered Dracos; no more loveseats, last cuppas while quoting letters or trading newspaper pages. He knew that night, and the next morning, and the year after, that her last enigmatic smile was how he’d choose to remember the way they were. They’d always said everything best by saying nothing, revealing all their yearning, flaring and quickly smothered, and hopes for second chances.
At least that’s what he told himself in her foyer, his mouth dry of any memorized speech, fingers bleeding sweat on his robes’ tangled knots. When she walked in, a sea breeze on an unbearably hot day, all he managed was, “Come back.”
After a pause, she asked, as though continuing a strand of an unfinished conversation, “Why?”
“Because if I said ending things was how I knew I missed you, you’d throw a sofa at me. Because no one else will ever care enough to push me. There’s nobody as right or enough wrong for me as you.”
“You, you, you-what’s in it for me?”
This might be the most important answer he’ll ever give, but he doesn’t hesitate. “Knowing you're waking up to someone who isn’t just in love with you but loves you.”
akashathekitty
Title: True Love Never Ends
Word Count: 500
Rating: PG
Warning: Fluff.
Summary: After every ending, there is a new beginning.
Draco first realised that his girlfriend was the jealous type when Pansy slapped the back of his head and hissed, “Stop bloody flirting!” Of course, he didn’t quite feel like obeying her-jealousy was nothing to indulge in, after all-and so he spent a very pleasurable half-hour flirting, followed by a very gruelling two weeks, using all of his charms and every trick in the book trying to win Pansy back. Having been suitably scared by the prospect of life without Pansy, he never again felt the need to flirt with another witch.
Pansy first realised that her boyfriend didn’t appreciate gossip the day Draco snapped, “Stop bloody nattering!” at her. Of course, she wasn’t going to let him get away with it, so she gave him the silent treatment for a month. It didn’t work quite as she expected, though. He soon just played along and sat with her in silence, read her books, and initiated steamy snogging sessions that she couldn’t quite stop without breaking her vow not to speak to him before he apologised. To her own surprise, she soon found that maybe silence had its benefits and when she finally did resume speaking to him, she spoke less of trivialities.
Nobody’s perfect, Draco sulkily thought to himself when Pansy screamed, “Stop being such a self-centered git!” and ran out on him. He’d forgotten that she liked to celebrate the day he’d first asked her out-to the Yule Ball in fourth year-as their special anniversary, so he hadn’t bought her a present and, worse, he’d cancelled their date in order to be with friends instead. It had just slipped his mind. That wasn’t excusable, right? Wrong. This time neither charms nor tricks worked, and only when he fell to his knees and swore to give her a new day to celebrate, one that he would never forget, did she let him back in her life. He then bought himself a calendar and charmed it to say ‘pay attention to what’s important to Pansy’ at the beginning of each and every day.
What’s his problem? Pansy pouted after Draco growled, “Stop smothering me!” and left in a huff. She only wanted to spend time with her fiancé, was that so wrong? She wanted him by her side every second of every day, and she wanted him to want her by his side as well. Wasn’t that love? Two halves of a whole? Never to be parted? Experimentally, she began letting him decide when they should see each other, and was sad to see it wasn’t nearly as often as she’d like. Didn’t he miss her at all? He soon enough answered that question by quite suddenly kissing her and saying, “Thank you for allowing me to miss you. It makes seeing you so much sweeter.”
On their wedding day, they were both poked about the end of their freedom. They merely smiled. Nothing was ending for either of them. Their life together was just beginning.
leigh_adams
Title: Rabbit Heart
Word Count: 500
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: Despite everything, Draco and Pansy can never manage to stay apart.
The first time Pansy had ended her "relationship" with Draco had been when they were five. At dance lessons, the prat had stepped on her pink frilly dress just because it irritated her. She’d cried and sworn she would never have another thing to do with Draco Malfoy as long as she lived.
Her declaration had lasted a week.
At Hogwarts, Pansy was Draco’s equal amongst the Slytherin hierarchy; the undisputed queen to his king. He had Crabbe and Goyle- minions, never friends- and she had Daphne and Tracey. To outsiders, they had the perfect relationship.
Things were never as they seemed, though.
Neither of them were prone to loud, abusive arguments in public. Despite their turbulence, both parties had an image to maintain amongst their peers. After the Yule Ball, Pansy declared their relationship over when she overheard Draco making a snarky comment about her dress robes to one of the older Slytherins. Their separation didn’t last long, though.
They never did.
When he was sixteen, Pansy realized that she was in love with Draco. That was also the age when she realized that falling in love with him was the stupidest thing she had ever done. He was a marked man- the Dark Mark on his forearm spoke volumes about that- and there was a very good chance that he wouldn’t survive to finish their sixth year.
She ended their relationship after Draco nearly killed the Gryffindor girl with the cursed necklace. She had looked into her boyfriend’s eyes and seen what lurked beneath the surface of his steadily cracking façade: desperation.
In all honesty, she had thought that would be the end of Draco and Pansy, two names bound together by a conjunction. But it wasn’t. The night she came home from Hogwarts, after the headmaster’s funeral, she had found him waiting for her in her bedroom. Everything about him screamed pure misery, and she had been unable to stop herself from crossing the room and drawing him into her arms.
They survived the war, though they were both forced to pay reparations. Potter had spoken for the Malfoys, but the Ministry still saw fit to seize assets from both the Malfoy and Parkinson estates- to pay for their crimes against society, of course.
That was the main reason that Lucius Malfoy had decided to betroth his son to Astoria Greengrass, Daphne’s cousin. She came from a neutral family whose reputation had survived unblemished. She was quiet, docile, and would make an excellent society wife; the perfect foundation on which to rebuild the Malfoy name.
When he told her the news, Pansy threw a Swarovski paperweight at his head. It was supposed to be her wearing his great-grandmother’s ring! In a fit of tears, she banished him from the house, declaring their relationship finished for good.
But when Draco appeared on his wedding day, still in his dress robes and unwed, the tears she shed were tears of happiness. While she had thought they were ending, the opposite was true.
It was only the beginning.
elle_blessing
Title: Cupid’s Chokehold
Word Count: 500
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings.
“Would you like sugar in your tea?”
Draco eyed Pansy doubtfully. "This is a terrible game."
Pansy straightened and glared at the loathsome blond boy. "Maybe you're just not very good at it."
"Maybe you're just boring and stupid." She wasn't. Greg and Vincent were much worse, but at least they didn’t ‘play tea’.
"Maybe you're just too much of a boy to understand." Pansy sniffed and smoothed her hands over her pink dress.
"Maybe you just look like a frilly pink poodle," Draco countered. He was nine. His mother called him a little man.
Pansy narrowed her eyes at him even as she reached for the teapot and dumped the contents all over Draco. "I hate you and I'm never, ever speaking to you again."
He was sopping wet and the tea was a little too warm for comfort, but Draco glared after her and her bouncing curls. "I hate you more!"
*~*~*
It was odd to both crave and loathe something at the same time. Pansy loved the way Draco pressed her against the wall, how he nipped at her lips, the way his fingers skimmed featherlight down her sides until he gripped her hips. It was thrilling.
She somewhat hated that she loved it so much. It would make him terribly smug if he knew.
"If you stop, I shall have to maim you," she breathed as he brushed his lips down her neck.
"Maybe I'll stop just to see what happens," he mumbled against her skin, hands finding their way beneath her jumper to the burning flesh beneath.
"I've no qualms about hurting you, Draco."
He smirked, gaze finding hers. "I always knew you were a sadist."
She narrowed her eyes at him.
"Come on. You know you want to." His eyes lit in anticipation.
The slap of skin echoed in the deserted hall and moments later a slightly disheveled Pansy was stalking away, leaving a red hand-print and smirking blond behind.
*~*~*
"Don't even think it."
Draco hesitated with only a hairsbreadth between their bodies. "Pans…"
"If you touch me, I'll do something," she said. Pansy tried to keep her voice level, but she couldn't hide the slight tremble. "I'll leave a mark. Passion. Anger. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you're getting married and I refuse to be second best. If you care about me at all, Draco Malfoy, you will step back. Now."
He didn't move.
"Draco," she whispered, glistening eyes finding his. "Please."
His jaw clenched, but he stepped back.
She let her breath out, relief and something like sorrow sluicing through her. "Goodbye," she whispered before slipping from the shadows.
*~*~*
"I was so thick." His hand was tight around her wrinkled, frail one.
"You were." Her voice was soft, almost gone.
"I'm here now." Too late.
She smiled, dark lashes brushing deathly white skin. "Just in time for the last goodbye."
A droplet slid down his cheek. "I love you."
"I know," she breathed, once, twice, and then no more.
Voting
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Thanks for voting! And please make sure to spread the word around so we get as many votes as possible! :)
Notes
- Contestants are required to vote, but must not vote for themselves (if you do, your vote will not count).
- Please take into account this weeks prompt, which was this quote: If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings. by Lisa Moriyama.
- Please vote with the number of the drabble, not the name.
eonone
Title: Pieces
Word Count: 477
Rating: PG
Warning: none
Summary: Draco has to ask Pansy a rather desperate favor.
“Auntie Pansy!”
Pansy barely made it through the front door before having her knees assaulted by two chubby arms. She grinned and hauled the blond-headed toddler into her arms; Scorpius giggled happily into her neck.
“Pansy, thank you,” she heard Draco’s voice as she entered the hall. He sounded tired. She bit back a remark about Astoria’s redecorating the place.
“Everyone else said they couldn’t take him. Daphne said she would, but she wanted to be at the hospital, too. I shouldn’t have bothered you- but she’s not getting better, and the baby...” he trailed off and Pansy nodded politely, ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach. She honestly couldn’t care less about Astoria, but she cared about the baby because it was his.
“Go. She needs you,” Pansy said, with a practiced, Pureblood smile. The words tasted bitter, like bile.
Draco returned the smile, but his was a genuine one, of relief. It stretched the dark shadows under his eyes.
“Scorpius, you be a good boy for Aunt Pansy. You do everything she tells you to, and your mother and I will be home soon.”
Scorpius’ lower lip trembled, but he nodded. “And baby?”
Draco’s face pinched. “And baby,” he said. Scorpius looked happy again, but Pansy could sense the hopelessness in Draco’s voice. They would be lucky to save Astoria. The baby- there was no hope for the baby.
Draco pulled Scorpius out of Pansy’s arms to give him a hug and a kiss. Then he caught Pansy’s hand and squeezed her fingers.
“Thanks again, Pans,” he said softly. “I mean it. I would have understood if you said no.”
Pansy shook her head. “Draco. I’ll always be here when you need me. That’s what friends are for.”
Friends. It was an absolute understatement, and they both knew it. They’d been playmates, confidantes. Lovers. They’d been everything but just friends, and now it was all they could ever be. He’d fallen in love with someone else. He’d gotten engaged, then married. Scorpius had come along, then the new baby. Every stage of what had once been Draco and Pansy had ended, quite succinctly, with every stage of what was now Draco and Astoria.
"Go,” Pansy urged again, taking the squirming Scorpius.
“I love you Pans,” Draco said, reaching for his wand. “Love you too, Scorpius. I’ll be home soon.”
“Love you,” Pansy said, too softly to be heard over the crack of Apparition.
It was a twisted little caricature of the life she’d always wanted. Holding another woman’s baby and waiting for the man of her dreams to come back to a home that wasn’t hers.
“Auntie Pansy, I’m glad you came.”
Pansy smiled. So maybe it wasn’t the life she’d wanted or expected. But it was still a life that included Draco in it. Whether they fell back together out of habit or out of love, they always fell back together. Just differently.
“I’m glad I came, too.”
terrayn
Title: The Way They Were
Word Count: 500
Rating: PG
Warning: none
Summary: When one beginning ends, another begins.
“Living every day like the last isn’t happiness. It’s fighting, living, loving too hard-until nothing remains. Sometimes…I wish we were old already. So we’d have survived all this and everything could be as uncomplicated as when we were young.”
“It was never uncomplicated,” he said.
His wife smiled, an inscrutable curl of her mouth. “Well, I’m hoping it won’t be someday. Being deliriously happy for a month then snarling for the next three-that’s not enough.”
“Don’t go,” he heard himself say.
“Stop me,” she replied with the same look of expectation of wanting more, always more, that drove him into fury-bloodshot hazes. Remembering their interminable, cratered silences, he didn’t move.
Pansy signed her name with the swiftness of compacting pain from an injury into one split second, another ‘ex’ in his column of failures.
“Only the end of a beginning. You’ve still the rest of your life,” said Mother.
“She claimed me already. Obligated to take her side or some such,” said Goyle.
“I is sorry. Mistre-former Mistress is taking all the silver,” said Verity, his one remaining house-elf.
Apparently, divorcing your wife meant divorcing everything you’d ever shared: friends, prized possessions, mementos, even Scorpius. He’d be damned if the Dark Lord wasn’t making snow angels in hell because he missed the yapping nuisance. Three hours after he’d drunkenly claimed a partiality to that name for their firstborn, Pansy handed him a newborn Corgi, the dog tag reading ‘Scorpius.’
“What?” she’d said when he glared from beneath drink-heavy eyelids. “You never specified our firstborn had to be human.”
That first night, he slept with a flask of cognac, rubbing the tan line of his ring-less ring finger, scrap metal for all it was worth now. Returning hers relegated him to “that tosser of an ex-husband” - no more wistful, whispered Dracos; no more loveseats, last cuppas while quoting letters or trading newspaper pages. He knew that night, and the next morning, and the year after, that her last enigmatic smile was how he’d choose to remember the way they were. They’d always said everything best by saying nothing, revealing all their yearning, flaring and quickly smothered, and hopes for second chances.
At least that’s what he told himself in her foyer, his mouth dry of any memorized speech, fingers bleeding sweat on his robes’ tangled knots. When she walked in, a sea breeze on an unbearably hot day, all he managed was, “Come back.”
After a pause, she asked, as though continuing a strand of an unfinished conversation, “Why?”
“Because if I said ending things was how I knew I missed you, you’d throw a sofa at me. Because no one else will ever care enough to push me. There’s nobody as right or enough wrong for me as you.”
“You, you, you-what’s in it for me?”
This might be the most important answer he’ll ever give, but he doesn’t hesitate. “Knowing you're waking up to someone who isn’t just in love with you but loves you.”
akashathekitty
Title: True Love Never Ends
Word Count: 500
Rating: PG
Warning: Fluff.
Summary: After every ending, there is a new beginning.
Draco first realised that his girlfriend was the jealous type when Pansy slapped the back of his head and hissed, “Stop bloody flirting!” Of course, he didn’t quite feel like obeying her-jealousy was nothing to indulge in, after all-and so he spent a very pleasurable half-hour flirting, followed by a very gruelling two weeks, using all of his charms and every trick in the book trying to win Pansy back. Having been suitably scared by the prospect of life without Pansy, he never again felt the need to flirt with another witch.
Pansy first realised that her boyfriend didn’t appreciate gossip the day Draco snapped, “Stop bloody nattering!” at her. Of course, she wasn’t going to let him get away with it, so she gave him the silent treatment for a month. It didn’t work quite as she expected, though. He soon just played along and sat with her in silence, read her books, and initiated steamy snogging sessions that she couldn’t quite stop without breaking her vow not to speak to him before he apologised. To her own surprise, she soon found that maybe silence had its benefits and when she finally did resume speaking to him, she spoke less of trivialities.
Nobody’s perfect, Draco sulkily thought to himself when Pansy screamed, “Stop being such a self-centered git!” and ran out on him. He’d forgotten that she liked to celebrate the day he’d first asked her out-to the Yule Ball in fourth year-as their special anniversary, so he hadn’t bought her a present and, worse, he’d cancelled their date in order to be with friends instead. It had just slipped his mind. That wasn’t excusable, right? Wrong. This time neither charms nor tricks worked, and only when he fell to his knees and swore to give her a new day to celebrate, one that he would never forget, did she let him back in her life. He then bought himself a calendar and charmed it to say ‘pay attention to what’s important to Pansy’ at the beginning of each and every day.
What’s his problem? Pansy pouted after Draco growled, “Stop smothering me!” and left in a huff. She only wanted to spend time with her fiancé, was that so wrong? She wanted him by her side every second of every day, and she wanted him to want her by his side as well. Wasn’t that love? Two halves of a whole? Never to be parted? Experimentally, she began letting him decide when they should see each other, and was sad to see it wasn’t nearly as often as she’d like. Didn’t he miss her at all? He soon enough answered that question by quite suddenly kissing her and saying, “Thank you for allowing me to miss you. It makes seeing you so much sweeter.”
On their wedding day, they were both poked about the end of their freedom. They merely smiled. Nothing was ending for either of them. Their life together was just beginning.
leigh_adams
Title: Rabbit Heart
Word Count: 500
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: Despite everything, Draco and Pansy can never manage to stay apart.
The first time Pansy had ended her "relationship" with Draco had been when they were five. At dance lessons, the prat had stepped on her pink frilly dress just because it irritated her. She’d cried and sworn she would never have another thing to do with Draco Malfoy as long as she lived.
Her declaration had lasted a week.
At Hogwarts, Pansy was Draco’s equal amongst the Slytherin hierarchy; the undisputed queen to his king. He had Crabbe and Goyle- minions, never friends- and she had Daphne and Tracey. To outsiders, they had the perfect relationship.
Things were never as they seemed, though.
Neither of them were prone to loud, abusive arguments in public. Despite their turbulence, both parties had an image to maintain amongst their peers. After the Yule Ball, Pansy declared their relationship over when she overheard Draco making a snarky comment about her dress robes to one of the older Slytherins. Their separation didn’t last long, though.
They never did.
When he was sixteen, Pansy realized that she was in love with Draco. That was also the age when she realized that falling in love with him was the stupidest thing she had ever done. He was a marked man- the Dark Mark on his forearm spoke volumes about that- and there was a very good chance that he wouldn’t survive to finish their sixth year.
She ended their relationship after Draco nearly killed the Gryffindor girl with the cursed necklace. She had looked into her boyfriend’s eyes and seen what lurked beneath the surface of his steadily cracking façade: desperation.
In all honesty, she had thought that would be the end of Draco and Pansy, two names bound together by a conjunction. But it wasn’t. The night she came home from Hogwarts, after the headmaster’s funeral, she had found him waiting for her in her bedroom. Everything about him screamed pure misery, and she had been unable to stop herself from crossing the room and drawing him into her arms.
They survived the war, though they were both forced to pay reparations. Potter had spoken for the Malfoys, but the Ministry still saw fit to seize assets from both the Malfoy and Parkinson estates- to pay for their crimes against society, of course.
That was the main reason that Lucius Malfoy had decided to betroth his son to Astoria Greengrass, Daphne’s cousin. She came from a neutral family whose reputation had survived unblemished. She was quiet, docile, and would make an excellent society wife; the perfect foundation on which to rebuild the Malfoy name.
When he told her the news, Pansy threw a Swarovski paperweight at his head. It was supposed to be her wearing his great-grandmother’s ring! In a fit of tears, she banished him from the house, declaring their relationship finished for good.
But when Draco appeared on his wedding day, still in his dress robes and unwed, the tears she shed were tears of happiness. While she had thought they were ending, the opposite was true.
It was only the beginning.
elle_blessing
Title: Cupid’s Chokehold
Word Count: 500
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings.
“Would you like sugar in your tea?”
Draco eyed Pansy doubtfully. "This is a terrible game."
Pansy straightened and glared at the loathsome blond boy. "Maybe you're just not very good at it."
"Maybe you're just boring and stupid." She wasn't. Greg and Vincent were much worse, but at least they didn’t ‘play tea’.
"Maybe you're just too much of a boy to understand." Pansy sniffed and smoothed her hands over her pink dress.
"Maybe you just look like a frilly pink poodle," Draco countered. He was nine. His mother called him a little man.
Pansy narrowed her eyes at him even as she reached for the teapot and dumped the contents all over Draco. "I hate you and I'm never, ever speaking to you again."
He was sopping wet and the tea was a little too warm for comfort, but Draco glared after her and her bouncing curls. "I hate you more!"
*~*~*
It was odd to both crave and loathe something at the same time. Pansy loved the way Draco pressed her against the wall, how he nipped at her lips, the way his fingers skimmed featherlight down her sides until he gripped her hips. It was thrilling.
She somewhat hated that she loved it so much. It would make him terribly smug if he knew.
"If you stop, I shall have to maim you," she breathed as he brushed his lips down her neck.
"Maybe I'll stop just to see what happens," he mumbled against her skin, hands finding their way beneath her jumper to the burning flesh beneath.
"I've no qualms about hurting you, Draco."
He smirked, gaze finding hers. "I always knew you were a sadist."
She narrowed her eyes at him.
"Come on. You know you want to." His eyes lit in anticipation.
The slap of skin echoed in the deserted hall and moments later a slightly disheveled Pansy was stalking away, leaving a red hand-print and smirking blond behind.
*~*~*
"Don't even think it."
Draco hesitated with only a hairsbreadth between their bodies. "Pans…"
"If you touch me, I'll do something," she said. Pansy tried to keep her voice level, but she couldn't hide the slight tremble. "I'll leave a mark. Passion. Anger. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you're getting married and I refuse to be second best. If you care about me at all, Draco Malfoy, you will step back. Now."
He didn't move.
"Draco," she whispered, glistening eyes finding his. "Please."
His jaw clenched, but he stepped back.
She let her breath out, relief and something like sorrow sluicing through her. "Goodbye," she whispered before slipping from the shadows.
*~*~*
"I was so thick." His hand was tight around her wrinkled, frail one.
"You were." Her voice was soft, almost gone.
"I'm here now." Too late.
She smiled, dark lashes brushing deathly white skin. "Just in time for the last goodbye."
A droplet slid down his cheek. "I love you."
"I know," she breathed, once, twice, and then no more.
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